Opening a discussion...

As I've mentioned before, I've been in a spiritual valley for 4-5 months now, maybe longer...and tonight, as I had dinner with a dear friend, I began to process what I've learned and what I've been going through...and how I've changed.

I don't want to say a lot now, because I still don't really know what is going on within me...but I do know that my new perspective on "religious" things has a great deal to do with my new love for U2--it wasn't caused by that, at all--there are just things about my new perspective that have made me connect with U2 a great deal more.

I wanted to post this quote that I found while reading today, to open a discussion. This is from the book "Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2" by Steve Stockman.

"The vast majority of U2 interviews and reviews over

the past twenty years touch or often concentrate on the

Christian faith that is so much a part of what the band is.

Their faith isn't ridiculed. It has never been questioned,

though how they keep it with the rock lifestyle has often

been a fascination. The Christian press and Christians in

general have been the doubters...There has been...

condemnation on their lifestyles, which include smoking cigars,

drinking Jack Daniels and using language that is not

common currency at Southern Baptist Conventions.

The Christian Community seems to have confined its
definitions of faith to various precise behavioral patterns

and cliched statements of faith. In getting caught up in

the minutia of behavioral codes that have had more to do

with respectable middle-class behavior than biblical

guidelines, many have been so obsessed with the cigar

hanging out of Bono's mouth that they are missing

the radical biblical agenda that has fired his life and work."

Wow! Can I just say that I have progressively noticed this "box" that Christians are supposed to fit in? Granted, I do NOT smoke, drink, or swear, and probably never will...but, starting back in D.C., I began to notice that you cannot judge a person's heart by their outward actions, such as drinking, smoking, swearing...

Anyway, I'd just be curious to know what other people think about this issue...do you agree or disagree? Why? I'm struggling more and more each day, and I think that it all goes back to a certain book I read last year...and I think it is making more sense....

Let me know what you think!