The song has nothing to do with religion. In my opinion, the lyrics are a monologue where the author expresses the psychological conflict that he had and still has to deal with the life choice he made when had to leave behind the love of his life to concretize his life purpose.
I think God here means the Center of Your Life or Purpose of Your Life, in other words, the most important or sacred thing in one's life.
For example, for many people, their true God is the money and the power, because their lives revolve around these things. For extremists and fanatics, their true God is not the God of their religion that they use as justification to do their own will and so commit violent acts against others.
Their true God is war, the desire to dominate and impose their will on others.
In the lyric, he asks himself "Where is your God? Which means" Where is the center and the purpose of your life?
The idea of these lyrics is that he is experiencing contradictory feelings within himself. These feelings are related to a love that had to leave behind to meet his purpose in life (which here is metaphorically exemplified as God.)
Here he refers to this great love that was left behind:
"The promises we made Were not enough
The prayers That We had prayed Were like a drug
The Secrets That We Were sold never known
The love we had, the love we had, we had to let it go, oh"
Note: In the video clip when he sings this last verse, he is faced with three children blondes, drawing symbols on the floor. Once they see him, they get up and run away from him. Immediately, many symbols of the band are tattooed on his body. In my opinion, this scene symbolizes the resignation of a dream to achieve another dream. The children who run away, symbolize the lost dream of having a family with the woman he loved. This dream was replaced by another dream - 30 seconds to Mars.
"Tell me would you kill to save your life?"
This verse is a metaphor. He is questioning himself if he was able to go to extremes to save his life which here means "his dreams and his life purpose".
"Tell me would you kill to prove you're right?" In this metaphor, he questions how far would he go to prove himself.
"This hurricane keeps chasing us all underground."
It´s about the psychological conflict within us and the fact that we question the choices we make in life. At one point in our life, we question our life choices and wonder if we had made different choices how our life would turn out to be.
This song is full of metaphors and that's why it's so hard to decode.
In Songfacts, Jared said this about the song "Up in the Air" - "I think that lyric is really important for us as a band because it's a conversation that started with 'Hurricane'
"I'll wrap my hands around your neck so tight with love, love"
I think he is killing that LOVE inside him so he can move on...
[Edit: Improvement of the comment as it had some flaws.]
The song has nothing to do with religion. In my opinion, the lyrics are a monologue where the author expresses the psychological conflict that he had and still has to deal with the life choice he made when had to leave behind the love of his life to concretize his life purpose.
I think God here means the Center of Your Life or Purpose of Your Life, in other words, the most important or sacred thing in one's life. For example, for many people, their true God is the money and the power, because their lives revolve around these things. For extremists and fanatics, their true God is not the God of their religion that they use as justification to do their own will and so commit violent acts against others. Their true God is war, the desire to dominate and impose their will on others.
In the lyric, he asks himself "Where is your God? Which means" Where is the center and the purpose of your life? The idea of these lyrics is that he is experiencing contradictory feelings within himself. These feelings are related to a love that had to leave behind to meet his purpose in life (which here is metaphorically exemplified as God.)
Here he refers to this great love that was left behind:
"The promises we made Were not enough The prayers That We had prayed Were like a drug The Secrets That We Were sold never known The love we had, the love we had, we had to let it go, oh"
Note: In the video clip when he sings this last verse, he is faced with three children blondes, drawing symbols on the floor. Once they see him, they get up and run away from him. Immediately, many symbols of the band are tattooed on his body. In my opinion, this scene symbolizes the resignation of a dream to achieve another dream. The children who run away, symbolize the lost dream of having a family with the woman he loved. This dream was replaced by another dream - 30 seconds to Mars.
"Tell me would you kill to save your life?"
This verse is a metaphor. He is questioning himself if he was able to go to extremes to save his life which here means "his dreams and his life purpose".
"Tell me would you kill to prove you're right?" In this metaphor, he questions how far would he go to prove himself.
"This hurricane keeps chasing us all underground."
It´s about the psychological conflict within us and the fact that we question the choices we make in life. At one point in our life, we question our life choices and wonder if we had made different choices how our life would turn out to be.
This song is full of metaphors and that's why it's so hard to decode.
In Songfacts, Jared said this about the song "Up in the Air" - "I think that lyric is really important for us as a band because it's a conversation that started with 'Hurricane'
"I'll wrap my hands around your neck so tight with love, love"
I think he is killing that LOVE inside him so he can move on...
[Edit: Improvement of the comment as it had some flaws.]