If having song lyrics stuck in your head drives you up the wall, and if U2 doesn’t quite float your boat, then sincerest apologies, but we need to start with a line from the band's 1987 hit: "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
If you’re about to scroll on, stay with me, as I promise you some thoughts pairing U2 and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer - an unlikely duo I’ll warrant you - but one that may help us consider why we still haven’t found what we’re looking for!
So, what are we looking for in life?
Bono's seeking soul
For Bono, mountain peak adventures, romance, and intense spiritual experiences left him stating via song that he still hadn't found what he was looking for.
How can U2 sing of broken bonds, loosened chains, nod to the freedom won by Christ’s death and resurrection, sing of the shackles of shame broken, and yet still be searching for what their souls are seeking?
Yet I suspect for many of us, for many of those sitting amidst us in worship on a Sunday, for those of convicted, confessional evangelical faith, there remains this unsettling and unsettled restlessness of the soul - this sense of still not having found what we’re looking for.
While we would love to put that down to a deep yearning for eternity and our heavenly home, for the fulfilment of God’s kingdom come with the second coming of Christ our King, while we would love to say we are restless for our true home, I suspect much of the running, much of the restless searching we do and feel, is tied to our hopes and dreams for this life and this world.
Bonhoeffer's future hope
Do we believe in the kingdom come? Do we live, breathe, and see life through this secure eschatological lens? For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, having such perspective was necessary spiritual armour for the fight against the evil he faced in Nazi Germany. Imprisoned for his Christian faith and stripped of all earthly comfort and ease, the reality of God’s kingdom come and the secure hope of its final perfected fulfilment at the day of Christ was the answer to his soul's seeking and searching.
It is the answer to every soul’s seeking and searching.
The call to absolute discipleship
This is why Bonhoeffer doesn’t beat about the bush when he writes. When Jesus says "Go", when the Son of God commands, "Come, follow me", the only response is in whole-self, whole-life action and obedience. For Bonhoeffer, the reality of God’s kingdom come in Christ was one that promised absolute freedom from shame, total release of burden and the deepest and most secure joy in the fellowship of Jesus.
But we can "only achieve this perfect liberty", Bonhoeffer writes, only truly enjoy and live out the heights and depths of this complete, all-encompassing union with Christ when, and only when His command, "his call to absolute discipleship, is appreciated in its entirety." [1]
"Jesus asks nothing of us without giving us the strength to perform it."
There is no picking and choosing what, when or how the "come, follow", or the "go here and there" commands arise in life. But Jesus asks nothing of us without giving us the strength to perform it.
What He has most preciously given us is His word, His Spirit and one another.
All we’ve been looking for is found in the life of another, in the life of our perfect, holy, righteous Saviour and Lord, Jesus.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Introduction, p.31
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