Modern Day God What?

There are so many different interpretations of “God” these days. Sometimes it seems like no two people can agree upon what “God” means. So how are we to cover all these varying opinions? We can’t. But let’s try, with a little help from some modern songwriters.

Some people believe that God sent Jesus to Earth to help common people and relieve them of their sins. They have faith in God and his plans for them. They are also very grateful that Jesus suffered for them. Sufjan Stevens writes in his song “To Be Alone with You” that he would “swim across Lake Michigan…[and] sell [his] shoes” to be reunited with Jesus. He regrets that he will “never know the man who loved [him]”. Even in this current age of doubt, people like Sufjan stay true to their ideas and maintain their faith in God.

Another more recent interpretation of God is presented by Joan Osborne. She introduces a idea that maybe God isn’t such an infinite being that cannot be known to us, that he could actually be quite common and familiar, in her one-hit wonder “What If God Was One of Us”. She references how some people have such a loose idea of what “God” is and yet do not find a problem with this. She begs the listener to think about concrete facts. For instance, she asks “if God had a name, what would it be?” and “if God had a face, what would it look like?”. While Joan maintains that “yeah, yeah, God is good”, she pounds the idea into our heads that God could in fact be “one of us”. Some people think of God as this all powerful being, but Joan reminds us that we can’t be sure of this, that he may be just like us, “just trying to make his way home”.

As we can see, even in the year of 2010 people have come no closer to finding a definite meaning for what “God” is. I have heard many different opinions on the subject and am nowhere close to making sense of it all. For me, I’m not sure if that will ever be possible.