Author’s Note: While I've done my best to recall the events I describe below to the best of my ability, I am mindful of how time and distance can shape my recollection. Additionally, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of  individuals.

In the summer of 1983, I became a strange kind of Christian. I wasn’t dragged to salvation by pious parents. Instead I third-wheeled my way to Jesus, tagging along as my troubled older brother fell in love with and found meaning in the gospel while our mother and stepfather stayed home. I was 12. I didn’t need salvation as much as I needed a father, and Jorge, the man who ran the Christian boys home my brother was sent to, became one for me. Since Jorge went to church, I did too. It was the price I paid for his guidance and attention, two things I didn’t get much of, and for the fun things we’d do at the boys home.

When you’re a kid in a cult-like group you don’t learn from lived experience because your living gets dictated by God through preachers, pastors, and the occasional prophet with a “word from the Lord” just for you. Older folks who had lived hard and fast enough to be saved from incredible lows—the pimps, prostitutes, addicts, and dealers who heard the voice of the Lord calling to them as they were sucking on the barrel of a pistol or a pipe—they got to sit up front. 

My sins were ordinary. Petty thievery. Lust. I rang doorbells then ran away giddy and giggling. I listened to secular music.

That summer I was shaped by another equally dynamic, yet competing force: MTV. At home I spent hours in front of the television watching videos by Duran Duran, David Bowie, and Dexy’s Midnight Runners, while at the boys home we went swimming, played capture the flag in the mountains, and tried to catch the spirit at a tiny, “on-fire” church in downtown Las Vegas. On Friday I’d watch “Burning Down the House” from Speaking in Tongues by​​ Talking Heads, then hear people speak in tongues on Sunday. This dichotomy grew when I went back to school, where I desperately wanted to fit in. I was afraid to wear my Christianity on my sleeve, or in Bible verses on my shirt like my brother Mike, who was born again hard. I launched into my teens as two people: holy on the weekends and wholly secular during the week, seeking approval and esteem in each world, while often disappointing both. 

I worked at becoming more comfortable being a Christian on a daily basis, but giving up MTV was hard. Before I found comfort in Jesus I found it in music. As a lonely kid with a gimpy leg and a broken family, the right song at the right moment could help me cope and feel less alone. Having someone I didn’t know speak my feelings when I couldn’t made a huge difference in my darkest moments. But most of Contemporary Christian Music just didn’t resonate with me—I couldn’t go from Tears for Fears to Twila Paris, from The Clash to Carman. A few CCM bands clicked, like the 77s, Undercover, and Lifesavers Underground, but most CCM artists were trying too hard to be the “Christian” version of whatever secular artist was having a moment. 

So I built a bifrost, listening to a few Christian artists while making metaphors in secular songs, like “Heaven On Earth” by Face to Face, “Strength” by The Alarm, and "Sanctify Yourself” by Simple Minds, my hymns. If a song was harder to hear as Christian, but had themes the believer in me could get behind, like “Russians” by Sting, and “People are People” by Depeche Mode, then I saw Jesus in them, too. It was Sin City in the 80s: the Nevada Test Site was blowing up bombs 65 miles away, and Gordon Gecko was telling us “greed is good.” Anything that uplifted the poor and blessed the peacemakers was easy to justify.  

And there was U2. 

I had friends at school and friends at church who listened to U2. While not explicitly CCM—they were signed to Island Records, a secular label—they claimed “the victory Jesus won” on “Sunday Bloody Sunday” right there on MTV. They had a song with lyrics that were straight-up Bible verses. I didn’t understand until much later that these songs reflected the band’s own struggle to “be in the world but not of the world.” I only knew that their music gave me permission to do just that: to be some kind of Christian during the week without having to repent on Sunday. At least not because of the music I listened to. They made me aware of people and topics outside of church that aligned with who I understood Jesus to be, or that would attract his attention, and therefore should have mine. “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “MLK” opened a door to the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.—someone I didn’t hear much about prior—and I knew that if I ever got the chance, I was most definitely NOT “gonna play Sun City.”

On April 12, 1987, a few years into my walk with Jesus, U2 came to Vegas for the 6th show on their The Joshua Tree tour and I had a ticket. The album had been out for a little over a month, and I was already wearing out my cassette. Mike met most of the band the night before the show. He worked at the resort where U2 were staying, and took his prom date there for dinner. As they waited in the lobby for their table, lead singer Bono, guitarist the Edge, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. approached. They were down to earth, a bit scruffy, and genuinely curious about what these two overdressed teens were getting up to. They were so friendly and engaging that my starstruck brother had to beg away or risk losing his reservation, blinking out “see you tomorrow” as he and his date excused themselves. 

Tomorrow came and Mike and I, along with Terry, a good friend from church, arrived at the Thomas and Mack Center right as the doors opened, determined to take everything in. We quickly found the sixteen-dollar, fourth-row seats we stood in line for weeks before, and waited for Lone Justice to open the show. At the time bands like U2 didn’t play Vegas. It just wasn’t a viable market for acts later to be labeled “alternative.” After a spirited set from Maria McKee and co., whose “I Found Love” and “Shelter” became new hymns for me, we waited for the main event. More people drifted in as roadies began to prep the stage for U2. My brother waved to some classmates a few rows back, including one girl—Genevieve I think her name was—who had lost her father the week before. In her grief, she had almost skipped the show, but her mother wouldn’t have it. “Go,” she insisted, “your father would want you to.” 

When the houselights dimmed and backlights blazed red on the screen behind the stage creating a blood-red “sky,” we stopped talking and cheered—prematurely it turned out. The only silhouettes cast in this artificial twilight were a few straggling crew members taping down setlists and plugging in cords. Then the last roadie left the stage and the newly familiar intro to “Where the Streets Have No Name” started from the speakers. These shimmering synth notes inched me forward until Larry—we were on a first name basis now (“Remember Mike from last night? I’m his little brother!)—took his stool behind his drum kit with a polite wave and began steadily tapping his sticks together. This delayed count-in, punctuated by gentle cymbal taps every sixth beat, got my head nodding as the notes that called Larry to his kit drew the Edge out next. He settled stage right, where he strapped on his guitar and began to play, shooting staccato darts from his amp as white lights strobed in time against the red. Adam Clayton, who appeared seemingly from thin air along with his bass, watched cooly from stage left as the frenetic, seemingly infinite riff Edge put down repeated into and over itself via echo and delay. When Larry moved from sticks and cymbals to toms and snares Clayton’s bass locked in with him. The 4/4 groove the three men created infected the crowd, moved down my spine, and into my feet. 

Then Bono arrived, his charisma floating with the smoke emanating from the machines behind the amps, thick and present on our skin. He grabbed the mic stand, said “Hello!” to more voluminous cheers, then stood back sizing us up, smiling coyly, as if wondering if we knew what we were in for. With a single cymbal crash the strobes stopped and a flood of bright, brilliant light chased away the red. All of us, clapping now, listened as Bono stepped forward, leaned into the arena, and confessed, “I wanna run, I want to hide, I wanna tear down walls that hold me inside.” 

U2 made it easier for me to live my faith as prescribed seven days a week. I was a regular in Eldorado High’s art room, and their obvious lyrical nods to Christianity made me more confident expressing my faith through my art. I did an anti-abortion painting, and another canvas was inspired by their song “Wire.” A drawing took third place in an art contest for my congressional district and hung in the congressman’s Carson City office, and I won fifty bucks designing a logo for the Clark County School Librarians Association. While this didn’t exactly make me a star at church like my brother Mike, who was now working at the boys home and was tapped for the ministry, it gave me a reputation as being “Sold out for the Lord.” 

Obedience is a Christian kid’s currency. Mine continued to earn the support and encouragement my parents could not or would not give, and kept me in Jorge’s favor. I felt like a blessed part of his inner-circle, helping him with various projects and spending weekends at his house behind the boys home. Practicing my faith also kept the fear at bay. Ultimately, I became more openly religious at school because I was afraid not to. Phobia indoctrination is the incongruous backhand of Christian “love.” Life’s inevitable adversities become tests of your faith; referendums on your goodness in the Lord’s sight. A dead car battery? That’s Satan at work. Gotta cast that demon out. Didn’t get that promotion you worked so hard for? I guess you didn’t pray hard enough. That party you went to Friday night with that cute girl from English class? You better repent, brother, even if you didn’t drink. 

How I looked in the Lord’s sight confused me, no matter how well anyone else thought I was doing. Three times a week I’d profess my faith in a miracle-making God—walking in and out of a building with a right leg that remained perceptibly imperfect, no matter how many times I asked that God for healing in Jesus’s name. My family was just as broken as it had been when video killed the radio star, and I went to that party because I was still lonely and aching.

But not that April night. As it was with Genevieve, who Bono brought up on stage to slow-dance with during “Bad,” that concert was a joyful moment for me, one where the tears of things didn’t matter, could not go toe to toe with the innocent, shining joy unleashed when Larry hit that cymbal and the lights lit us all up. I see now how that was perhaps the first time I completely gave myself over to any moment since my father left when I was six, and while the words I was singing along to were demonstrably English, I might as well have been speaking in tongues. 

About two years after that concert I was working part-time at a home improvement store while going to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas full-time to study art. Jorge had become my pastor. He had started his own church and was slowly winding down the boys home, the ministry that had potentially saved Mike and me from a life of crime. I was 18, attending church three times a week, tithing 10% of my meager pay, witnessing to the lost downtown, even preaching occasionally. I did the signs for the church building. Jorge enthusiastically supported my studies. He had tearfully given me a typewriter for school, clearly proud of the man I was becoming with his help, and chipped in when I was short of tuition once or twice. Mike was working as the church’s youth pastor, and had gotten engaged to the daughter of a couple Jorge was in ministry with: a seemingly royal match. I was lonely. I had just broken up with a girl I loved because she wasn’t Christian enough. Emily was my first love; a beautiful brunette with brown, almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones. But my church seemed strange to her. I had been taught that God expected a certain type of girl who lived a certain type of way. Emily wasn’t willing to accept the limitations and sacrifices I had asked for. While my faith was not a deal-breaker for her, I couldn’t be as flexible. God wouldn’t have it.

Then Jorge and his wife Annie had a falling out with Mike’s fiancée’s parents. Whether it was doctrine, finances, or whose name should be first on the stationary was a mystery to me then and still is. There were rumors that Annie, who was part of the worship team, was having an affair with someone close to Mike’s future in-laws, causing them to pull out of the ministry. No matter the source of the acrimony, it caused collateral damage. Annie “got a word” saying God didn’t approve of Mike’s match, a word that Mike refused. I did my best to stay neutral, diving into my studies and trusting the Lord to work things out. A few weeks before the wedding, though, Jorge approached me. He had an opportunity to start a side business selling remaindered hotel furniture, and he wanted me to run it with him. It was obvious that I couldn’t do this and stay in school, as was the real reason he was asking for this sacrifice. After the wedding Mike and his wife would be moving to Albuquerque to start a church with his future in-laws, and Jorge was trying to sound out my plans, to see who I would choose. That I had to choose didn’t occur to me at all before that moment. Yet here he was, asking me to sacrifice my education, something he so wholeheartedly encouraged and supported, something I loved. Was God that fickle; his will so inconstant? 

Around this time U2 was finishing up their Lovetown Tour supporting the Rattle and Hum film and soundtrack album, two projects that were an extension of the creative vein they started mining with The Joshua Tree. At the close of a show in Dublin, one of their final stops, Bono announced to the hometown crowd, "This is just the end of something for U2... and it's no big deal; it's just we have to go away and... just dream it all up again." I was about to do the same. I followed Mike into my father’s house. We weren’t close in the conventional sense. We never really talked about our problems because no one ever taught us how to. But we always faced them together. When he left Jorge’s church, I walked out with him. And I kept the typewriter. 

Aside from the time when my mom finally left my stepfather, change had rarely been good to or for me, but this shift would be different because I felt God was with me. To feel otherwise was dangerous. I kept on working and going to school in Vegas, but started looking at colleges and universities in New Mexico with an eye towards joining Mike in the future. I also dutifully sought out a new church. I was so conditioned that not going was never an option. But after many Sunday mornings in different churches, it became clear that security and belonging weren’t as portable as my bible. Starting over in another building with other people was difficult and awkward, even if the sermons were similar and I knew all the hymns. I was a spectator at a game I was used to starting, and constantly comparing the new potential “brothers and sisters in Christ” to the ones I had left. Looking back, I don’t think people at these churches knew what to do with this kid who showed up alone and without a salvation sob story. I was hoping these strangers would see how awesome I was always told I was, but when my presence didn’t translate to the kind of warmth and acceptance I was used to, I couldn’t help but internalize it. Couldn’t they see the halo? I remember introducing myself to one pastor after a service, and all I got was a “Thanks for coming.”

So after a few months I went back to my former church, and caught Terry after a Thursday night service. There were no concerts for us to go to, but I was hoping we could hang out, maybe get a bite to eat like we so often had after service. But Terry refused. To his credit, he didn’t sidestep the obvious with a little white lie. He told me outright that, as far as he was concerned, I was one to be avoided. “I’m still a Christian,” I argued, “I still go to church.”

“But not this one,” he countered. “It doesn't feel right having fellowship with you.” 

If Terry had agreed to go get a meal with me that night, I probably would have returned to Jorge’s church, left school, and started selling tacky, gently used couches (with matching loveseats!). But he said “no.” I realize now he had no choice. No matter how much favor obedience banks you, the withdrawal penalties are just too great. It’s not that he didn’t want to be with me, he didn’t want to end up like me. I was becoming a cautionary tale.

For nearly a decade my emotional well-being hinged on the support of people who were no longer a part of my life; and, without it, my sadness and insecurity threatened to hemorrhage and overwhelm. The charismatic tradition would call the fear and doubt nagging at me “conviction”—a clear sign from the Holy Spirit that I was living outside of God’s approval. So I threw myself into school, and kept my eyes on moving to New Mexico, where a new church with familiar people was waiting. But that started to feel wrong, too. Maybe I blamed my brother for the consequences of a choice he never asked me to make, or maybe I just liked UNLV too much and wanted to stay. I felt smart at school, on my own terms, and probably for the first time. It was the only thing going right, and when I was there my spirit lightened.

The closest my stepfather ever came to commenting on my intelligence was to tell me, “Mister Tommy, why don’t you bend over, reach between your legs, and pull your head out of your ass.” I had taken some honors classes in high school, but I was a mediocre student outside of the art room, and while Jorge had encouraged me to go to college, being booksmart about anything other than the Bible wasn’t worth much in church. It was easy for me to be a good student at UNLV, perhaps because it didn’t have anything else to compete with. One time I feverishly wrote an English paper ten minutes before it was due. When the instructor read it over in class, she shared a few observations aloud: I had written my style analysis on the wrong reading, which was a shame, because I was the only student who actually seemed to get what a style analysis was. 

There was a woman in that same class, who was pretty. She was also funny and warm. We had great conversations in and out of class, and I developed a massive crush, one I did my best to ignore. Leah was a bit older than me, and clearly out of my league. Plus I was moving anyway. Nevertheless, one December day at semester’s end I watched myself asking her to come look at my portfolio in the art department, as if having an out-of-body experience. She said yes. Just as she did a few weeks later when I asked her to marry me. Leah wasn’t the kind of believer I was used to, but the obvious kindness she embodied and shared with everyone made me want to fold her into my life, just like those secular songs that shared space on my mixtapes. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed one night, tearfully praying about our relationship, not wanting it to end before it had a chance to begin. Or, more accurately, not wanting to end it the way I did with Emily. I never heard the voice of God in church the way Jorge and others did, never got a “word” or uttered a string of prophecy. Until that night. My heart, desire, desperation—whatever it was— convinced my mind that a still, small voice inside me said “yes” and my fear left me. We got married on Groundhog Day in 1991. “Night and Day,” a Cole Porter cover U2 recorded for Red Hot + Blue, a benefit album for AIDS related causes, was on our wedding playlist. Within nine months U2 released Achtung Baby and I would have a nervous breakdown soundtracked by “Acrobat.” 

I didn’t hide my faith from Leah, and she never discouraged or disparaged my beliefs. She accepted my choice of officiant—a man named Bill—who was cut from the same cloth as Jorge. She even went to a few churches with me, though it was obvious she wasn’t interested in being the type of believer I was. I began flirting with other denominations, attending a progressive Catholic parish a few times, for example. I was playing hide-and-seek, looking to find that familiar connection with God, or hoping to start a new one on different terms. The more I searched for God in churches, the less felt his presence there. Instead, I started catching glimpses of Jesus in other places—via the words and actions of people who were “lost” by my standards—people who were gay, who drank and smoked, who were pro-choice. They were supposed to be like the cartoon characters in Chick Tracts—those little comic books designed to "lead" people to Christ I’d pass out while “witnessing”—but I saw no demons lurking over their shoulders. Instead I saw and felt acceptance and compassion. Not from all of them, obviously. Some were assholes. But I witnessed a lot of Christ-like behavior from people in need of Christ’s salvation, and it threw me. The context was wrong. Only Christians were supposed to behave like this. 

My new life took me places and had me doing things that brought happiness and some welcome peace. A beautiful Shetland Sheepdog we named “Bercy” came into our lives. We took road trips to the San Diego Zoo and Seaworld, hiked Zion National Park and watched Shakespeare plays at a replica of the Globe Theater in Southern Utah. We went to Disneyland, and saw U2 live on Halloween night at Dodger Stadium with Public Enemy and The Sugarcubes in support. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, called in by satellite phone. Instead of being able to fully enjoy these things, I was looking over my shoulder, waiting for God to pull the leash and call me to heel. I was afraid He wanted me to sell furniture with Jorge, or to be with my brother in New Mexico. I was afraid God no longer wanted me at all. These questions led to stray thoughts about missing the rapture and winding up in hell, which caused debilitating panic attacks, sometimes at work or school, and I became deeply depressed. I felt like the titular insect from U2’s “The Fly,” falling away “from the sheer face of love, like a fly on a wall” of someone else’s story. Leah was patient and kind as my anxiety grew, but she didn’t know what to do for me. Aside from the odd day where I couldn’t get out of bed, I managed to maintain my balance and composure. There were grades to earn and bills to pay, so I faked it, trying to convince myself that I was meant to be happy.

The second time I got saved was on the floor of a chain bookstore. Leah worked at a B. Dalton Bookseller at the Boulevard Mall, just down the road from UNLV, and I’d sometimes join her there after class to browse the stacks while she finished her shift, especially during my blue moods. One evening I was looking through titles on a lower shelf in the religious section when one caught my eye. I sat down in the middle of the aisle and immediately started reading Toxic Faith: Understanding and Overcoming Religious Addiction. I learned that faith becomes toxic when it’s less about salvation and grace and more about rigidity and control. I was addicted to the acceptance and belonging I got from Jorge and the church, and I faithfully performed for fear of losing it. I had confused “God” with the dopamine hits I was getting by being Jorge’s good and obedient servant. I wasn’t being abandoned by God, I was literally going through “withdrawals.” I’m grateful to Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton. Their book lightened me. It gave me permission to meet God on my own terms; to go to worship in church or nowhere regularly. Over the next few months, I built myself a new “religion” of sorts, one that combined the social justice I was learning about in school with The Sermon on the Mount. Without realizing it, though, I was really replacing one kind of conditionalism with another. Instead of working out my beliefs on my own terms, I was choosing beliefs and attitudes I thought would align most closely with my Leah’s, even though she never asked me to. 

Over the next ten years or so, U2 and I dreamt up a few more reinventions. They became the biggest rock band in the world, and I became a teacher and a father. Zooropa saw the beginning of the end of their ZOO TV period, and soundtracked a move to Ohio so my wife could earn her Doctorate. While there, my studies shifted from art to sociology as the band released Pop. By the time All That You Can’t Leave Behind arrived in 2001, I was teaching high school English in a small Adirondack town and finishing a master’s degree in education. Every milestone should’ve put more distance between me and my toxic past, and given me a foundation of lived experiences to stand on; but again, I wasn’t really living for myself, or even exploring what “self” meant for me. I had replaced one toxic faith with another of my own creation, trying to curry approval I already had. To be clear, Leah only wanted me to be happy. She was far from manipulative or self-centered (until she had to be towards the end of our marriage, to protect her own heart), but she couldn’t save me either. “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” could’ve been the song for our divorce and my reaction to it, but in the end I chose “Grace.” By the time How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was released in 2004, I was on my own, finally starting to learn, like Tolstoy, that the kingdom of God can’t be found in the words of a preacher or the arms of a partner. If it was to exist at all, I had to find it in me.

The line from then to now measures two decades, four U2 albums, and around 4,500 words. The band and I are still a thing even if liking U2 in 2026 is akin to bird watching: it’s a nice way for middle aged white guys to spend their time, but lacks the alpha punch of playing rugby, or sporting a Proud Boy haircut, or wearing a “Fuck ICE!” shirt. Like any long-lasting relationship there have been ups and downs. I was happy to have 2014’s Songs of Innocence gifted to my iTunes library, even if the lead single, “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)” was disappointing. And while I think that song’s cookie-cutter bombast was a lazy reach for “oohh, ohh, oh-oohhh” arena relevance, its lyrics plumbed the through-line to that April night when “I was young, not dumb,” and “wishing to be blinded.” 

This year, U2 unexpectedly released two EPs, which I’ll call their “Lenten Cycle” as they bookend lent. Unlike 2017’s Songs of Experience, Days of Ash (which was released on Ash Wednesday), and Easter Lily (which arrived on Good Friday), were enthusiastically received by both critics and fans, including me. Salon called the Days of Ash “an urgent dispatch from a band that still believes,” while Billboard lauded the EP as a welcome return to form: “U2 have always stepped boldly up to share their views on the state of the planet. And, in a world that often feels like it's gone mad lately, the veteran band have done it again.” Easter Lily was described as a “Las Vegas Sphere-sized dose of signature U2,” by NME, while USA Today called it “a reminder of what the band does best—nudging us to think while enveloping us in layers of chiming guitars and the steady heartbeat of a bass drum.” Writing for Atwood Magazine, David Buyze notes that, when taken together, Days of Ash and Easter Lily, “offer a powerful way to reflect on our exterior and interior worlds—from defiance to introspection—heralding an artistic renaissance for the band amidst their self-proclaimed ‘wilderness years.’” 

They’ve matured; and, finally, so have I. I’m married to a woman I have no business being with based on looks or character, as she easily outclasses me on both counts. My ex-wife and I, along with our partners, have raised an intelligent, compassionate, caring human. I’m twenty-five years into a profession I still love, currently working at a therapeutic high school with colleagues and students I admire and respect. Instead of looking for another savior, I’ve rebuilt myself using the best pieces and parts from the wreckage of my past. I’m not sure I’d call myself a Christian with any conviction, but I still hold onto the beatitudes that inspired Jorge to devote his time and attention to a bunch of juvenile delinquents. The social gospel I claimed in college, that took Martin Luther King, Jr. to the mountaintop, Malcolm X to Mecca, and Greta Thunberg to Gaza still centers my moral GPS. Doubt and loneliness are sometimes present, but never for long. I know and like myself quite a bit, which makes it easier to live without the blanket acceptance my awesomeness rightly deserves from others (even though I’ll take it if it’s given). 

Whereas I’ve left the woods, my country seems lost in them, and my “faith,” for lack of a better descriptor, demands a response. This administration trades on fear, turns people against one another, and cruelly others the most vulnerable among us for political gain, all while hiding behind a Trump Bible. It erodes every promise in the Preamble, robbing the many of the blessings of liberty while a privileged few pillage and profit (with President Trump and his family chief among them). Meanwhile, more Americans are relying on credit cards to make ends meet. In a sense, Trump and the people behind his presidency have weaponized—and seek to nationalize—the conditionalism that warped my faith and made it toxic. Christian Nationalism is what happens when you let American Exceptionalism, the Prosperity Gospel, and Legalistic thinking drive public policy. A few people get rich at the expense of others who literally get left out in the cold. 

At first “The Tears of Things” from Days of Ash—a song told from the perspective of Michaelangelo’s David as he watches the tragedies of the world from his Florentine pedestal—was to be this essay’s final focus—my moment-meeting song. My outrage at the story of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind Rohingya refugee from Myanmar with legal status, who died after Border Patrol agents dropped him at a closed coffee shop in the February Buffalo cold, was raw. I was also angry at the Christians—including some I used to call friends—who voted for the people that allowed Shah Alam’s death to happen; even viewed them as Godly. I thought writing about “The Tears of Things,” with its reminder of how “when people go around talking to God, it always ends in tears,” would help me process the anger I felt towards my fellow Americans, specifically those who were willing to support some very unChristian policies as collateral damage on the way to building a so-called Christian Nation, one that won’t be very Christ-like at all if they succeed. 

I started this essay on March 11, 2026—just two days after The Joshua Tree’s 39th anniversary—but I quickly hit a wall. In “Tears,” Michelangelo’s David is a beautiful, larger-than-life symbol of youthful idealism and strength with heart-shaped eyes. But he’s static. Unlike the shepherd boy he represents, Michelangelo's David stands helpless against the many giants—including the church—responsible for a level of suffering that can’t be defeated with five smooth stones. The more I wrote about “The Tears of Things” and all the Goliaths it brought to mind, the more I felt stuck like a statue. When I heard “COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord at All Times?) a few weeks later” I slowly started moving again.

“COEXIST” is the last track on the Easter Lily EP. The song starts with a synth line like “Where the Streets Have No Name,” but aside from flourishes from a drum machine, it never loops in other instruments; never builds to the sort of sweeping, earnest run “Streets” does, nor does it try to out-shout the room the way “American Obituary” the song that opens Days of Ash and therefore the whole of the Lenten Cycle. It’s a quiet song, “a lullaby for parents of children caught up in war.” It’s just Bono’s voice against Brian Eno’s soundscape. That’s it. Its refrain, “I will bless the Lord at all times” comes from the 34th Psalm, which makes David a thread connecting “The Tears of Things” to “COEXIST.” I remember David being one of Jorge’s favorite topics—he would say he wanted to be like David: “a man after God’s own heart.” “COEXIST” sparked something in me. It was pushing me through my writer’s block, and to a place where my past was waiting. David was waiting for me there.

When David pushed his way into this piece, I picked up Eugene H. Peterson’s Leap Over a Wall, Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians, which uses David’s life as a handbook of sorts for modern living. Peterson is mostly known for The Message—a translation of The Bible in contemporary language. The New Testament version of The Message came out in 1993 after I had already left the church, but somewhere along the way, I picked up a copy. I always felt the need to keep a Bible, even as my reasons for doing so have shifted over time. The Message does not exactly “slap” nor is it “bussin’” (and neither am I, evidently), but its modern, conversational language does mitigate the barrier between clarity and confusion. This makes it harder for bad actors to use King James’s archaic, Jacobean English to control and manipulate others. Take the King James version of a verse from “Two Corinthians”: “Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels” (Like, what the hell!?). Peterson’s translation reads, “We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way.” That makes a lot more sense. Peterson struck me as safe: someone who was in the church, but not of the church—at least not the kind of high-control church I left behind.

Peterson made David accessible, while cautioning against seeing David as a moral model. “Of all the characters in the Bible,” Peterson writes, “it is David who is most human. His life is lived on the ‘rough-edged actuality’ of real life.” Perhaps that’s why U2 chose David for two songs for their Lenten EPs: one from the perspective of a mythologized, but powerless version of David; the other a Psalm in the Davidic tradition of giving thanks and praise to God, even when he seems farthest from you. As ridiculously hubristic as it sounds, I see myself in David—not as the giant killing shepherd or in the temple-building king—but in the way he navigated his imperfect world as an imperfect person. Whenever David fell from grace, something he did often, he didn’t just performatively seek God’s forgiveness, he tried to use his failings to become a better man.

David did not think conditionally or conventionally. Peterson argues in Chapter 4, “Imagination: David and Goliath,” that what really sets David, the young shepherd boy, apart from every one else gathering in the Valley of Elah—King Saul, the giant Goliath, David’s brothers, two massive armies—was his ability to see the possible through the impossible; to acquire a “God-Dominated Imagination.” I’m not sure my understanding or experience of God lines up squarely with Peterson’s, or David’s for that matter, but I agree that, “the moment we permit evil to control our imaginations, dictate the way we think, and shape our responses, we at the same time become incapable of seeing the good and the true and the beautiful.” 

I’ve been struggling to find a way to face the arrogant, angry, and seemingly imperious Goliaths trodding people like Nurul Amin Shah Alam underfoot. When David initially stepped up to face Goliath, he did so bearing the weight of Saul’s armor. Saul thought he was doing a good thing in preparing David for battle on conventional terms, giving him his own armor and sword. But David wasn’t skilled with those kingly weapons. Had he met Goliath wearing Saul’s armor and bearing Saul’s sword, his story would’ve ended quickly. Peterson’s book would be a lot shorter. Instead, he set the King’s weapons aside, and turned to the tools that protected his flock again and again: a sling and some stones. 

When I was a little kid, I wore my brother’s armor. As a teen, I wore Jorge’s. After him, I borrowed my first wife’s. Turns out I’m not the armor wearing type, and my most effective weapons are my own. My journey away from fundamentalism wasn't just a change in religious attendance; it was a refusal to wear the heavy, suffocating armor of legalism. Today, when political discourse demands that everyone put on their techno-armor and join the outrage machine, "COEXIST" offers an alternative posture: an unarmored, quiet center that chooses to uplift instead of own. I am still, very much, that chronically unsure kid, that “child without armour” and an “ice cream smile wide as a mile.” What gives me surety, though, is not what I hate—even though it’d be very easy to define myself in those terms—but what I love. I love birds. I love music and art. I‘m better at writing than I am at making and keeping friends, but I love the idea of community, and of using my work to help build one. I relish the fleeting moments I have with people I love: my wife, my daughter, my family, even my colleagues. Maybe that’s my version of a “God-Dominated Imagination.”

David’s story was only beginning when he cut down Goliath with two potent yet unorthodox weapons: his shepherd’s sling and his youthful idealism. One of the most written about people in The Old Testament would be a musician, a fugitive, a king, an adulterer, a murderer, a shitty father, and a poet. I’d argue that among all of his powers and gifts, David’s greatest was his willingness to embrace his failings and use them as inflection points. Other ancient rulers claimed semi-divinity, while David was utterly human. His humanity shouldn’t excuse his flaws; but, conversely, his flaws shouldn’t exclude his humanity, his potential to change. So often, my comrades in resisting the kind of America this administration is trying to build are just as conditional and legalistic as the church I left, using people’s perceived flaws to excommunicate and cancel. If this were applied to David in his time, I’d have no one to write about. 

It’s odd, looking back, that I kept that typewriter when I left the church. I didn’t see myself as a writer then, but it was my writing and not my visual art that would turn UNLV into a kind of sanctuary for me during my time in exile. Peterson addresses the idea of sanctuary in Chapter 6 of Leap Over a Wall, “Sanctuary: David and Doeg,” where he recounts David’s time at the temple in Nob. Peterson sees sanctuary as a holy place, while broadening the idea of “place” to include more than just buildings. Sanctuary can be metaphorical, too. When David arrives at the temple, he is on the run. King Saul sees David’s growing popularity as a direct threat to his reign, and in his jealousy he wants David dead. “The killing of David,” Peterson notes, “has turned into a cause, a state policy to be implemented impersonally,” something that will keep Israel great. 

When David approaches Ahimelech in the temple, the young warrior is desperately trying to preserve “everything that makes him who he is.” So he lies to the priest. David tells Ahimelech that he’s there on the King’s business. He convinces Ahimelech to give him the sacred bread from the altar and Goliath’s sword—a symbol of state triumph—in service of his non-existent secret mission. Ahimelech nervously complies, knowing that doing so goes against the temple rules. Sanctuary is where people find restoration, not just refuge. Ahimelech understood that while ritual and tradition is woven into the fabric of “sanctuary,” precedence and rule-keeping should always make way for mercy and leave room for grace. Ahimelech’s correct choice would have dire consequences. That sanctuary is available to anyone leaves it open to corrupt motives, including David’s. But David wasn’t the only person in the temple at that time. 

Doeg, who Peterson identifies as “the head of Saul’s secret police” was there, too, “carrying out some rite of penance or purification.” Doeg would make careful note of what he witnessed at Nob, and report back to Saul. Enraged at the idea of anyone helping David, Saul calls Ahimelech and the other temple priests to court, and orders their execution—which Doeg ultimately carries out, despite knowing that Ahimelech had acted in good faith. David lied to Ahimelech, something Doeg witnessed first hand. Revealing this truth might have saved not only Ahimelech’s life, but also the lives of every person in Nob, who were also condemned for their alleged collusion with David. David “used” Ahimelech and the sanctuary he provided to survive, to protect his humanity in the face of Saul’s unjust and illogical persecution. Ahimelech saw a hungry man and fed him. He gave someone who needed protection a weapon. Doeg wasn’t at the temple for fellowship or healing or refuge. He certainly wasn’t there to bless the Lord or anyone else. Doeg was there to make himself look good; to advance his standing in Saul’s court, to virtue signal. He was using religion to prop up his own interests, and to give his actions the veneer of heavenly approval. The fact that he was able to place David there, and to use that knowledge for personal gain was just a bonus. 

Psalm 34’s call to “bless the Lord at all times” was written by a desperate fugitive. David had left Nob and headed for the Philistine Kingdom of Gath, hoping to bond over a common enemy. Or maybe he was hoping King Achish wouldn’t recognize him. If so, David probably shouldn’t have shown up armed with Goliath’s sword, a potent symbol of the Philistine’s greatest defeat. David escaped execution by feigning insanity, and fled to the cave at Adullam. He faced the wilderness alone, exhausted, and close to broken. But people found him. Good people. David is first joined by his family, who’ve fled the kingdom fearing Saul’s anger at David might fall on them. “Not only that,” Peterson’s paraphrase of 1 Samuel 22:2 tells us, “but all who were down on their luck came around—losers and vagrants and misfits of all sorts.” Eventually, this former shepherd has a flock of 400 loyal men. The wilderness is a place where we’re tempted, tested, but also refined. Peterson recalls how the many wilderness stories in The Bible, with all of their beauty, danger, and uncertainty end with clarity. “You see more, hear more, yes, believe more…” David’s test is visceral. He has quickly gone from the comfort of Saul's court in Gibeah to living rough in an inhospitable environment under threat of death—and his would-be killer is in hot pursuit. Rather than focus on the harsh reality of his surroundings, David’s “God-like imagination” sees sanctuary, a place where he and his men can build a protective community free from Saul’s conditional control. David is still in the wilderness, but he’s alive and no longer alone; and, being so blessed, will bless the Lord in return.

Not every wilderness we lose ourselves in is geographical. In Chapter 7, “Wilderness: David at En-Gedi,” Peterson shows how circumstantial wildernesses exist, too. David and his men leave the cave at Allum, and eventually arrive at En-gedi. En-gedi is a small oasis on the edge of the Judean desert near the Dead Sea, a suitable sanctuary for a band of refugees. One day, as David and a few of his men were seeking shelter from the heat in the deep recesses of a nearby cave, a man’s shadow casts over the mouth. It was Saul, looking for a place to take a dump. Suddenly, the man responsible for David’s suffering, whose black jealousy turned a loyal hero into a death-marked fugitive, is there for the killing. Saul is oblivious. Hearing nothing but nature’s call, he ungirds his sword, takes off his clothes, and does the Old Testament equivalent of taking the Browns to the SuperBowl (“the kids to the colosseum” maybe? I’ve no clue). A few of David’s men step forward, swords drawn, ready to extinguish the source of their pain and exile, but David motions them back. He’s not going to let Saul’s evil spark evil in him. Instead, David sneaks over to Saul’s clothes, cuts a square from the hem of his garment, and retreats back to his gobsmacked men. Saul finishes his business, leaves the cave, and makes his way across the canyon.

Suddenly, Peterson tells us, David calls out, “My lord the king!” which naturally catches Saul’s attention. David then bows, holds up the scrap, and explains, “See what I have in my hand? It is the skirt of your robe. Just now, instead of cutting your robe I could as easily have cut you, killed you. But I will not do that because you are the Lord’s anointed.” By this point Samuel had already anointed David to be king, which, along with David's growing popularity, was why Saul hated him so much. Eliminating David would keep the crown on Saul’s head and preserve it for his progeny. But David spared Saul. He chose the example set by Ahimelech as opposed to the one set by Doeg, and as a result faced many more years of wilderness living. David’s choice was the antithesis of Saul’s, and an affront to the conditionalism of the day. Anger required destruction in the face of a threat; while outrage demanded vengeance for the massacre at Nob. David set aside “an eye for an eye” and gave Saul sanctuary in the wilderness. In doing so, David left room for Saul to change.

The either/or conditionalism that shaped my experience with charismatic Christianity seems to be something a majority of people unwittingly agree on today. Anything that challenges our thinking or confronts/affronts our beliefs can be dismissed with a snarky comment or canceled with a block button. We are digital Doegs who deprive all discourse of context or nuance, while using people’s lives and tragedies to bolster our beliefs instead of lifting those people up. We don’t want to solve problems. We want to be right. During Karmelo Anthony’s August 20 appeal hearing, information that had been withheld at trial about his and Austin Metcalf’s respective pasts was released. Neither of them was an angel, but people on either side cherry-picked what they presented on their feeds, excluding Metcalf’s past while highlighting Anthony’s, and vice-versa, to bolster their opinion, whether it be for likes or self-righteous surety. No one really seemed interested in understanding the why behind either boy’s prior actions, or how they may have contributed to their fateful intersection inside that Texas tent. No one seemed interested in taking something away from this tragedy that might prevent others like it from occurring. Disturbingly, very little was said about either family left behind. Neither side was much different from the other in act or intent. Neither seemed to realize they had a different choice.

I’ve faced a few wildernesses in my life. When I was five my family disintegrated shortly after relocating to Las Vegas from Buffalo, New York. Then there were my own two divorces—one from the church and the other from my first wife. At times I felt as rigid and cold as Michaelangelo’s statue, watching life’s unchangeable tragedies pass like new and invincible Goliaths while I stood frozen with fear or fuming with anger. But I’ve found sanctuary, too: in the desert with my dog Sammy as a little kid catching lizards with my brother, playing foosball at the boys home, drawing in Mr. Jensen’s art room at Eldorado High School, sitting in the front row of Jorge’s church. I felt profound peace in an arena on a warm spring night in Vegas, in an English 102 class reading “ Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and in the passenger seat of a rented car on the wrong side of the road in England, my wife driving (thankfully) while Stonehenge passed on our left. 

Sanctuaries like these aren't built by ignoring the world’s tragedies, nor are they defended wearing someone else’s armor while carrying someone else’s sword. Like “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” from 1983’s War, “COEXIST…” is not a rebel song, but it’ll do for me. I’m too old to meet anyone at the barricades; too well versed to scream when I can write, and if you’ve read any of my work, you’ll see how—if this administration and the people driving its policies prevail—my name could find a place on the “first they came for..” list, simply because my words disagree with their policies or speak of protecting those they persecute. No one's immune from that knock on the door. If it comes, I’ll be in good company. Until then, there’s a kind of person I want to be, to stay. Nurul Amin Shah Alam’s death was not a one-off. Another vulnerable immigrant released from federal custody—Daphy Michel—died under similar circumstances just one week later. I could list similar outrages that litter our circumstantial wilderness like rocks, but I’m sure you already get the picture. 

Speaking about “The Tears of Things” in Propaganda, the band’s official fan ‘zine, Bono said "What fundamentalists across the board have in common is that they rob God of all metaphor... They're literalists, they take the poetry out of everything including creation.” Which leads me to the question mark Bono added to the end of David’s vow of praise in “COEXIST (I Will Bless the Lord at All Times?)” Aside from the title, the Lord is blessed 12 times in the song. Also aside from the title, a question mark follows the blessing just once: the eighth time, after “Drones hover without any consciousness over war crimes.” Sanctuary is not guaranteed, nor does it guarantee protection if you’re lucky enough to find it. Sometimes the wilderness prevails. 

The fact that God seemed silent to Nob’s destruction then, and Shah Alam’s & Michel’s now—all while the Doegs of history grow fat from their suffering—makes it difficult to sing songs of thanks and praise. Today I struggle with the idea of God. But I leave the door open, not because I’m afraid not to, but because things I once learned in His name still sustain me. I imagine David felt this way as well. I wonder if he sat in the cave that would later reek of Saul’s shit, and wrote “I will bless the Lord at all times” through gritted teeth. Just because it was hard for him, I don’t think he meant it any less. The question mark honors that struggle. Whether we believe in God or not, we all have our En-gedis. We shoulder outrages that are either direct and personal, or ones that tangentially challenge our personhood. We have a choice on how we respond. Ahimelech and David chose grace instead of doing what convention and conditionalism demanded. The Doegs of today—on both sides of the political divide—respond differently. They build their power by weaponizing “the pages that enrage us” via performative outrage, purity tests, and digital score-keeping. That doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it, and It takes me away from a center I’ve worked so hard to find. It’s like wearing borrowed armor. The only weapons that make sense to me, given the gravity of that question mark, are teaching and watching warblers, loving my wife and daughter, and using my words to spin the beauty of the wilderness into a sanctuary for others.