Bono and Eugene Peterson on the Psalms

Last updated on: May 26, 2016 at 5:03 am by Jonathan Storment

Bono and Eugene Peterson on the Psalms 2016-05-22T18:07:44-05:00 Jonathan Storment

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I don’t know if you’ve seen this video before or not, but if you haven’t seen it, please drop whatever you’re doing and watch it. It’s a short film that documents the unlikely friendship of Eugene Peterson (translator of the Message) and U2’s frontman Bono.

It’s amazing. Peterson and Bono have so little in common (at one point Peterson refers to “mesh pits” at Rock n’ Roll concerts) but what they do have in common is powerful.

Here’s some of the transcript from their interview hosted by Dean Nelson.

On Peterson leaning Bono was a fan of his Work:

Eugene Peterson: I’d never heard of Bono before. Then one of my students showed up in class with a copy of the Rolling Stones—Rolling Stones?—and in it there was an interview with Bono in which he talked about me and The Message. He used some slangy language about who I was, and I said, “Who’s Bono?” They were dumbfounded I’d never heard of Bono, but that’s not the circle I really travel in very much. That’s how I first heard about him. Then people started bringing me his music, and I listened to his music, and I thought, “I like this guy.” After a while I started feeling quite pleased that he knew me.

Dean Nelson:Yes, but the rest of the story is that he invited you to come and hang with them for a while. You turned him down.

Eugene Peterson:I was pushing a deadline on The Message. I was finishing up the Old Testament at the time, and I really couldn’t do it.

Dean Nelson: You may be the only person alive who would turn down the opportunity just to make a deadline. I mean, come on. It’s Bono, for crying out loud!

Eugene Peterson:Dean, he was Isaiah.

Dean Nelson:Yeah.

On Church Music and Christian Art:

Bono: “The Psalms that have this rawness, this brutal honesty about the explosive joy that he’s feeling and the deep sorrow or confusion, and it’s that that sets the Psalms apart for me, and I often think, ‘Well, gosh, why isn’t church music more like that?…I find a lot of dishonesty in Christian art, and i think it’s a shame because these are people who are vulnerable to God, I mean in a good way. These are people who are vulnerable to God…you know porous and open. I would love if this conversation would inspire these beautiful voices and say Gospel songs, if it would inspire them to write a song about…their bad marriage. Write a song about how they are pissed off at the government. Because that’s what God wants from you, that truthfulness…And that truthfulness, the truth will set you free, it will blow things apart. Why I’m suspicious of Christians is because of this lack of realism, and I love to see more of that, in art, in life and in music.

On Violence in the Imprecatory Psalms:

Dean: What do we do with violence in the world? The violence in our own hearts and the violence in the world? -Dean

Peterson: “That’s a hard question. We need to find a way to cuss without cussing, and the imprecatory Psalms surely do that. They just lay it out. And I think they’re really important. In the context of the whole Bible and the Psalms, they tell people [they can help us] tell people how mad we are.

Bono: I love the idea of, you’ve got to cuss, find a way to cuss without cussing. You’ve got to give vent. I like that, that’s going to stay with me.

On a Christian response to the Violence in the Psalms:

Dean: Is there a way to read the Psalms through Jesus’ eyes that helps us understand violence or non-violence?

Peterson: Well yeah, the crucifixion. Where there’s violence there’s got to be some kind of response. And is it more violence or less? I’m glad that there are crosses in every room of this house. I don’t think of them as decoration. I think of it as ‘this is the world we live in, and it’s a world with a lot of crosses. And I would just like to spend my life doing something about that, through Scripture, through preaching, through friendship…I don’t want to escape the violence.

Selah

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