Anderkoo

I’ve been consuming U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
nonstop since buying it last night. The final track, the audaciously
named “Yahweh,” caught my attention immediately. U2 is well-known not just as a rock band, but as a Christian
rock band, and quite possibly the only commercially successful
“liberal” Christian rock band. A song titled “Yahweh” is a presumptive
statement of their faith, and in fact it doesn’t disappoint.

I’ll
leave the deeper biblical exegesis to Rachel, though the lyrics are
fairly transparent. (The overall mood is much like Christmas eve, a
prayerful waiting). To me the part that leaped out was the last verse
of the song and of the album, the first half of which reads…

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill

Take this city

If it be your will

What no man can own, no man can take

… if only because there has been so much news
recently about U.S. armed forces “taking” the city of Falluja.
Certainly Falluja is no city on a hill, and if it is a rebuke to say
that it “should be,” the question of who ought be responsible is an
open one. Yet if it is not our right to “take” the city, it’s also true
that neither did the insurgents “own” it. The actual city of Falluja
itself is not its buildings but rather the huddled homeless refugees.

Take this heart

Take this heart

Take this heart

And make it break

The song’s final plea is not the usual one for world peace,
but rather something both simpler yet equally impossible. Bono prays
not for our hearts to heal but to break.
To love our neighbors and
indeed our enemies is to hurt that they hurt, whoever or whatever may
be responsible for the pain. It is not a prayer for compassion, though
compassion is implied; it is not a prayer for love, though love is
necessary; it is not a prayer for justice, though justice would result.
It asks us just the simple question: do our hearts break for the city
of Falluja?

(Why is the song titled “Yahweh,” and does the line “Always pain
before a child is born” imply a latent antisemitism? This is a
troubling question that’s close to the root of historic
Jewish-Christian tensions. I can’t really judge this, but simply refer
for now to Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby’s claim
that Judaism countenances — indeed, sometimes commands — hatred of
evildoers, with the added caveats that (1) he shows a lot of chutzpah speaking on behalf of such a diverse faith, and (2) he’s an idiot.)