Mailbag: Me and my love for Christian group U2

I just received an eMail (yay!) from, of all people, Donny Pauling. There’s a long background story here, which you can check out in the appropriate comment threads at Blag Hag and which is too long (and off-topic) to detail here, but suffice it to say that my sympathy for the guy is a bit limited. However, I don’t have anything to be snarky about in this missive:

Just read a bit of your IMDb profile. Found it interesting to see U2 listed as one of your favorite bands. As I'm sure you know, they're a Christian group, so to see "a teenage liberal atheist" list them as your favorite group is encouraging. Cool.

I certainly am a über U2 fanatic (well, within reasonable limits), and their songs probably form a good third of the few hundred songs in my personal playlist. I am well aware of them being Christian (notably how their different faiths nearly tore them apart before the magnificent ‘One’ came along), yet never has this been the slightest issue with me and my love for their works. Hell, arguably one of their most faith-oriented songs, ‘Peace on Earth’, in which they call for Jesus to bring peace and love to Earth, is one of my personal favorites. I have absolutely no problem with music or groups with religious undertones or motivations^[1]; why would I? I judge music for what it is: beautiful sounds that carry a meaning. As proud an atheist and as rabid as I may be in tearing through stupidity and vileness, I am not sensitive to the point of slapping anything remotely religious or faith-oriented.

I’m not entirely sure what Pauling inferred by my loving U2 being “encouraging”, though. I just love their music (well, most of it) and have a great respect for their humanitarian efforts. Them being Christian has nothing to do in either increasing my opinion of them, nor decreasing it, and it certainly isn’t “rubbing off on me”, for lack of a better way to put it.

Anyone wanting to check out my IMDb profile (or any other of my haunts around the Web), just click the appropriate link in my “About Me” section. You know, right underneath that big pic of my noggin in the upper left sidebar.

Note – Dammit! Wanted to send this response to Donny via eMail so he’d get it faster than by arbitrarily browsing this blog, yet I conveniently deleted his eMail by accident. Argh.

[1] Except for Christian Rock and such tasteless(ly) proselytizing music, which irks me to no end. Blech.

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