CAN A ROCK STAR CHANGE THE WORLD?: He just might, if his name is Bono

I was surprised last fall to read that when asked which public figure they saw as the best example of Christian witness, an overwhelming majority of Christian college students (both conservative and liberal) put Bono, the lead singer of the rock band U2, at the top of their list. Yet when I gave it some thought, I had to agree. In fact, over the space of the last several years, I’d come to the same conclusion on my own. He seems to be everywhere that it counts, and his approach comes closer to following Christ’s example than many so-called Christian leaders who seem too caught up in politics and inter-denominational bickering to focus on doing God’s work. I’m also not surprised that many find fault with Bono’s approach, deriding it as too ecumenical, too commercial and too secular to be considered a “true” Christian witness. I would have to disagree with this, since Christ has always used some very unlikely types to achieve great things. True, he hardly lives a blemish-free life, and by his own admission lives pretty well above the norm, yet he puts his energy behind his words, and gets a lot done in the process. But if you still have your doubts about Bono's faith, and if you'd like a better idea of where his head is about Christ and grace, read this short piece that appeared in The Nation in 2005. There's nothing watered-down about this man's faith.

I recall reading the transcript from a keynote address he gave at a National Prayer Breakfast last year. In it, he jokingly admitted to having a messianic complex and wanting to save the world. He also acknowledged he had grown up with a real aversion to organized and institutionalized religion, something he witnessed firsthand growing up in Ireland with one Catholic parent and one Protestant parent. He said he felt that religion often gets in the way of doing God’s work, and once again I have to agree with him. He spoke of how he grew up asking for God’s blessing in following his own dreams, and then learned to simply do God’s will because it was already blessed. Just look what’s happened since he figured that out. He’s now one of the most recognized figures in the world, and for many, the face they associate with leadership in the fight against disease, starvation and crushing poverty among the least fortunate of the world.

The most recent of his endeavors, and probably the most loudly criticized by some of his detractors, is his founding of the Product Red project. I’ve heard it criticized as too commercial, too crass and too entwined with the downside problems associated with free markets and globalization. Yet the money from this project, which goes into The Global Fund to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, has totalled many millions of dollars and helped many millions of people around the world. Rather than rail against the system, Bono simply decided to take the system, with all it’s faults, and turn it back on itself. Rather then sit on the sidelines and criticize, he stepped into the fray, took the bull by the horns, and used the considerable power and economic wealth of the free-market system to do a tremendous amount of good for those who can't participate in it. As he noted, people are going to shop anyway, so why not use a system that’s already in place to do some good?

Bono provides us all with a wonderful example of what you can do if you just get busy and do God’s work. It doesn’t have to be pretty and perfect, and you won’t always be able to create a “clean” and untarnished sequence of events to get the work done. But if you get to work with whatever system there is, and do God’s work, He’ll be there to see that it bears spiritual fruits.