Oh My God

This is an awesome song.. one of my new favorites off of Good Monsters.

This is what Dan has to say about it: "With Oh My God, we wanted to kind of communicate that everybody at some point intersects with God, whether they choose to believe or not, and people all have their reasons for crying out to God. And some of those are really deep, deep doubts. There are times when I wrestle with that now, but growing up I didn’t know the gospel could stand up to the scrutiny. It’s a question that I think needs to be asked. This song has three parts. It starts out being many people’ stories and the third part is my personal story...Why I cry out to God." - Dan Haseltine (Jars Of Clay)

Quote from Dan Haseltine's Blog:

"...Some questions, when they are found, will never go away. They are like scabs covering deep wounds, once scratched off the skin, they bleed slowly for a lifetime, but they remind us that we are alive and that we feel and think and embrace, and inhale and exhale.

Oh My God was a point of convergence. The depth of my hearts depravity, the pain I had walked through in the world, and the pain I observed through the stories and images and places I saw in Africa came together in this song.

It is a song in three parts.

Part one, simply setting the stage: This verse really describes the human condition... we are fatally wounded people, tainted by sin, and plagued by shallow faith that sometimes doesn't hold us as we search for a clear answer to the question of Jesus' death and resurrection. Doubting the existence of God is part of our human story.

Part two of the song: This is actually where the song began... Matt brought the question to the band, "Why do so many people use the phrase, "Oh My God?" And we began to think about the various people who use the phrase, and wondered if we could describe this in a song.

It is amazing to me that a person can use the same phrase to be both a curse and an affirmation. These three letters can be used in part of our deepest contentment and our deepest longing. So whores and angels and all of the above use it. People who believe in God and people who don't still find need for this phrase.

Part three: This is the rant. This is why I, in that season, spoke those words. I did not deliberate over these lyrics. The song was only sung once in the studio. These words were only written within seconds of singing. This is a gut level grouping of words. And it was a way of bringing the questions I had been storing up and forgetting about and remembering and fighting, to amplification. And so it ends with questions, just as it started.

We performed this song two times. We didn't edit it for the record, or add very much to it. It still is one of my favorite songs to sing."

It's a simple prayer..."oh my God." By far one of the best JoC songs next to "Worlds Apart."

My thoughts about the meaning of "our greatest offense" as a great JOC fan and minister of their denomination, having thought about what Dan says and the belief system they ascribe to:

'Our greatest offense' is taking all the evil and pain of this world...

...that we are both corporately and individually responsible for as those connected and intrinsically similar to the original man who rebelled against God and brought all this upon the world and mankind and continue to bring upon this world in rebellion against the purity of God's intention with our own lack of love and hatred, even on the part of those like the author of this song at the end who is cognizcent of both his own bad bent and failure of will to reach out and love and relieve...

...and then having the nerve to sigh out, cry out, and emotionally shake our fist in our soul and blame a pure hoy grieved God for what we have done and we bring on with our own evil. Who has not at small problems or the largest evils that face us, said the words or thrown up the attitude in our hearts in angry address "Oh, my God!"

"Why have YOU made me like this?" Rom 9 "The woman YOU gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit..." Gen 3

"Oh my God" is the angry cry of the raging mothers watching all the evils that have resulted from mankind's failures (and of all of us in our moments of facing the things of this world that are not as they should be) and, however briefly, indignantly complaining and emotionally blaming a responsible God. This is another example of the evil heart disposition of us all, to include people of God, that stiffen their necks at the consequences of our own sin and refuse to repent, but in their hearts would curse God not uhlike the men of Revelation 16:10-11.

"Men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done."

It is fashionable among MANY pastors to say that "It's okay to be angry at God... Its no sin."

I think it is among our crowning offenses to besmirch his reputation in our own soul and deep recesses of our heart, if only expressed in brief moments, for the horrific damage and evil we have wrought.

This song is about facing the evil in the world and confronting the existence of God. Lead singer Dan Haseltine said in Christian Music Today that the phrase "Oh My God" means "so many different things and it's used in so many different contexts, but in the end, it means that at some point in every person's life, they have to confront whether or not God is real."

Excellent track, but everything Jars does is gold in my eyes. I hope they continue to make beautiful music for many years to come. This song reminds me of World's Apart in the way that Dan builds the ending.

This song makes me fall unto my knees and cry....T_T

I love this song. I think the writer is trying to say in the end part that our greatest offence is a lack of love and that's the reason he's crying out to God. If we had enough love we wouldn't "move to hurt each other". There's also lots of other situations in these lyrics that are caused by the lack of love. In the end part he's saying "all the cries of thirsty children, this is our inheritance", like couldn't we do any changes to give better life for our offspring and those who are suffering of poverty or war.

I love the end to this song. How it builds and it says the only defence for all these things is crying out to god.

Jars of Clay is the most brilliant band ever... christian and non-christian! Dan Haseltine is a brilliant writer, with a great voice... backed by great musicians.

This is a great song. I love the sort of "creepy" audio effects that Jars of Clay seems to deliver a lot as well as the powerful words. Very moving.