U2 Ep: "Days of Ash"

U2 have always written as believers who refuse to surrender the public square to either cynicism or triumphalism. They are not partisan Christians, theirs is a prophetic voice.

With Days of Ash, released this past Ash Wednesday, they return to that calling with unusual urgency. These are not abstract reflections. The songs are anchored in blood, protest, invasion, fracture, and the moral confusion of the West. Yet beneath the political immediacy runs a theological current that feels unmistakably Christian.

Ash is what remains after fire. It is residue. It is evidence that something has burned. In Scripture, ash is also the sign of repentance. Sackcloth and ashes are not theatrical gestures. They are confessions that something has gone wrong at a deep level. This EP lives in that space. It refuses to pretend the fire did not happen. It also refuses to let ash be the final word.

“American Obituary” begins there. It is not a slogan but a lament. The naming of Renée Good grounds the song in the particular. That matters. Empires prefer categories. The gospel insists on names. When the song repeats, “I love you more than hate loves war,” it does not sound sentimental. It sounds defiant. Hate is portrayed as having appetite, loyalty, and ritual. War is its sacrament. Love must therefore be more stubborn than violence is hungry.

The political critique is clear. State power can become reckless. Language can be twisted to protect systems instead of people. Religious rhetoric can be co-opted by nationalism. But the deeper critique is theological. The “people of the lie” are not simply opponents in a culture war. In Johannine terms, the lie is the inversion of reality that calls evil good and good evil, the “newspeak” of 1984. Given a name in John’s letters, it is the only use of the tern “antichrist” in the Bible.

This song’s hope that “America will rise” is not nationalist mythology. It is resurrection language aimed at truth telling. If there is to be rising, it will come through repentance, not myth.

“The Tears of Things” moves inward. It asks, how a person is formed in the aftermath of violence? The speaker imagines himself as unfinished marble, longing to be released by a sculptor’s hand.

The image is deeply biblical. God as craftsman. Humanity as material being shaped. Yet the song does not romanticize formation. To be shaped is to be struck. To be made into an instrument is to be hollowed out.

The most haunting line is the question, “Was it really you I heard?” In an age of ideological noise, discernment becomes a spiritual discipline. Not every commanding voice is divine. Not every passion is holy.

“Song of the Future” widens the lens again, this time toward the schoolgirl protests in Iran. The future is personified, not as inevitability but as invitation. “Who said the future is closed?” is a challenge to fatalism. Christian hope has always insisted that history is not sealed. Resurrection cracks open what looks final. Liberty in this song is not Western triumphalism. It is human longing rooted in dignity. The line “All alone, but not alone” echoes covenant language. Exile is real. Presence is also real. Hope is not naïveté. It is resistance. (In my first listens, this is also my favorite song musically speaking.)

“One Life at a Time” is corrective. In a moment saturated with sweeping rhetoric, the song questions the desire to “save the world” overnight. There is an implicit warning here against messianic self-importance. That instinct is found on both sides of our tribal divide today.

Christianity does not call individuals to redeem history. That work belongs to God. What is given to us is obedience in proximity. One life at a time is not small. It is incarnational. When the lyric echoes “perfect love drives out fear,” it refuses to let that verse remain a slogan. How does that actually happen here, in this place, amid this chaos? The question is not skeptical. It is practical.

“Yours Eternally” feels like covenant renewal in the midst of war. With Ukraine in view, the language of endurance and fidelity carries weight. “If you have the chance to hope, it’s a duty.” That line sounds almost Pauline. Hope is not mood. It is moral obligation. The repeated “Воля” at the end is not decorative. It is a cry for freedom that echoes Exodus as much as geopolitics. Liberation is never merely national in Scripture. It is theological. God sides with the enslaved. But the song also insists on solidarity. “You are not alone.” Covenant love persists when power fractures.

Taken together, these songs form a critique not just of the extreme right or oligarchic populism, though those are clearly in view. They critique idolatry. When nation, tribe, or ideology claims ultimate loyalty, crosses bend. When power cloaks itself in divine language, ash follows.

Religious nationalism is not strong faith. It is faith misplaced.

What makes Days of Ash compelling is that it does not abandon Christianity in the face of that distortion. It leans into it. Love remains central. Truth remains objective. Formation remains necessary. Hope remains commanded. The cross remains the pattern. This is not partisan Christianity. It is cruciform Christianity. It assumes that violence does not get the last word, that lies cannot finally outrun truth, and that resurrection remains history’s deepest interruption.

Ash marks what has burned. In Scripture, it also marks those who know they need mercy. This EP sounds like believers standing in the ruins of false gods, confessing what has been lost, and still daring to speak of love, freedom, and eternity. That is not escapism. It is faith working in public.

Days of Ash does not offer easy consolation. It offers something harder and better. Lament without surrender. Protest without hatred. Hope without illusion. And fidelity that refuses to bow.