According to songfacts.com, "Bono: 'About losing your faith.'"
In the last verse, God gives him the keys to the kingdom, but the narrator chooses to slip away and forsake all that was bequeathed to him. The last lines, however, still say, "For the first time, I feel love."
In the second verse, despite saying, "When I feel myself going down, I just call and he comes around," Bono ends it with, "!!BUT!! for the first time, I feel love." That "but" shows how regardless of the kindness shown him in the past, for the first time he feels love. The question is whether this is because he has become gratefully aware of that love or in spite of it.
This song is wide open to interpretation, though I'd love to know what Bono's intent was. The holy trinity ideas were interesting. Another idea I might throw out is that, having forsaken God, the events in the first and second verses occur AFTER the third verse, when his friends (i.e. lover/brother) are showing him that, even having thrown away the keys to the kingdom, there is still love and beauty in life.
As for me, an atheist, I can't tell you how in love I felt with life when I threw God away. For someone who breaks away from faith or believing in something, it doesn't happen in an instant, the cracks form and deepen across the years, and when you finally let go it becomes an affirmation of life, of yourself. Like he says, for the first time I felt love.
According to songfacts.com, "Bono: 'About losing your faith.'"
In the last verse, God gives him the keys to the kingdom, but the narrator chooses to slip away and forsake all that was bequeathed to him. The last lines, however, still say, "For the first time, I feel love."
In the second verse, despite saying, "When I feel myself going down, I just call and he comes around," Bono ends it with, "!!BUT!! for the first time, I feel love." That "but" shows how regardless of the kindness shown him in the past, for the first time he feels love. The question is whether this is because he has become gratefully aware of that love or in spite of it.
This song is wide open to interpretation, though I'd love to know what Bono's intent was. The holy trinity ideas were interesting. Another idea I might throw out is that, having forsaken God, the events in the first and second verses occur AFTER the third verse, when his friends (i.e. lover/brother) are showing him that, even having thrown away the keys to the kingdom, there is still love and beauty in life.
As for me, an atheist, I can't tell you how in love I felt with life when I threw God away. For someone who breaks away from faith or believing in something, it doesn't happen in an instant, the cracks form and deepen across the years, and when you finally let go it becomes an affirmation of life, of yourself. Like he says, for the first time I felt love.