"God Is Love" Songs

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

And so we sat and read various things like 'He Will Hold Me Fast...In Bed', 'Lord and Master of Us All...In Bed', 'When He Cometh...In Bed', 'Trust and Obey...In Bed', 'Come and Dine...In Bed' and giggled our heads off until

Me: * reads* 'Christ, You Are My Fullness'
Me: ...
Me: * closes book*

—This LiveJournal entry

These are songs that, at first hearing, seem to be ordinary love songs, but are actually allegories about the singer's relationship with God, often by artists who are trying to gain or keep a mainstream secular audience and feel that talking about God will put people off and exclude them. Can sometimes lead to Unfortunate Implications when a praise song sounds dirty to people who aren't familiar with the context.

Can sometimes be a subtrope of What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?. Sometimes this is Lampshaded by having the singer change "baby" to "Jesus" or vice versa to appeal to a different audience.

Sometimes referred to as "Jesus is My Boyfriend" songs.

Examples of "God Is Love" Songs include:

Film

  • The movie Sister Act inverts this by taking 1960s love songs and turning them into hymns. Oddly, because of the tamer (relatively) lyrics of such songs at the time, as well as that it's brides of Christ singing them, it actually works better than modern Christian rock.
  • Thoroughly invoked and parodied in Hamlet 2. Imagine the cast of Glee putting on a performance of The Producers, and you're more or less there. It features a song called "Rock Me Sexy Jesus". Though the director (played by Steve Coogan) insists it's a metaphor in movie, it's pretty obviously a song about wanting to bone Jesus.

"Immaculate conception really makes my day/ but the dudes got lats that make me feel gay/ Turn the other cheek is really showing class/ But I really think it's sexy when he kicks Satan's ass"

  • In Highway 61, the main character (who's possibly a Christ figure) has sex with his girlfriend in the graveyard outside a church, which is intercut with a choir inside the church belting "Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus".

Folklore / Mythology

  • The Persian/Arabic folklore Layli And Majnun (The Madman and Layli) is a story of Courtly Love; however, many Sufi poets write about it and interpret it as an allegory of the believer's relationship with God. (Of course, that's a typical Sufi thing.)
  • The Bible's Song of Songs: Some scholars say that this erotic poetry about a bride and groom on their wedding night is meant to be understood as a metaphor God's relationship with his people. Of course, other scholars say that the book is simply celebrating erotic love in a marital context. Or possibly both.

Live Action TV

  • The "Let My Love Open The Door"/"Still" inversion is parodied by "You, You, You" from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, with Stephen as God and Hugh as a (female) backup singer.
  • Parodied in True Blood with the song "Jesus Asked Me Out Today," performed at a camp held by the Fellowship of the Sun and attended by Jason.

Music

  • A lot of the music of 1980s Christian band Stryper, though this was not surprising.
  • "Long Long Long" by The Beatles, as admitted by George Harrison. Actually, most of his songs fit this trope.
  • "I Know you Love Me" by the Smoking Popes. Josh wrote it before he discovered Christianity and became a preacher, but after listening to it more than once it becomes painfully obvious that it's about God.
  • Word of God (ha!) has it that Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door" is sung from the point of view of God to humanity, making this an inversion.
  • "Bargain" by The Who is actually about the search for God/spiritual enlightenment. Similarly, the "you" in "See Me, Feel Me" and "Who Are You" is stated to be God.
  • Angela Aki had one or two of these on her one American album, which was very heavily religious.

"I want to walk hand-in-hand with Jesus on a private beach for two./I want him to nibble on my ear and say, 'I'm here for you.'"

  • This applies to about half of everything U2 ever recorded.
  • Depending on which version you listen to, definitely a part of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
    • ...Leonard Cohen in general, to be honest.
  • Prog rock band Twelfth Night had for a time a singer named Geoff Mann, who just happened to be an ordained priest. Not surprisingly there's a lot of Christian values in his lyrics, but he made them as metaphorical as possible because he didn't want the band to be pigeonholed as "Christian rock". The song "The Ceiling Speaks" is a prime example: the line "Christ, I love you" takes on a slightly different meaning when you realise it's meant literally.
  • Type O Negative's "Christian Woman" parodies this kind of song by bringing out the above mentioned Unfortunate Implications in the open: the song is about a woman harbouring Perverse Sexual Lust for Jesus Christ.
  • Apparently, "I Need You" by LeAnn Rimes falls into this category. Not surprisingly, it's been included on an album called Jesus: Music From And Inspired by the Epic Mini Series.
  • "Only Hope" by Switchfoot, especially as it was used in the movie A Walk to Remember.
    • Borderline, as the original version is somewhat less ambiguous. It's the more well known Mandy Moore version that causes the confusion.
  • "Donnie Davies" with "The Bible Says".
  • The aforementioned "You Light Up My Life".
  • Brooke Fraser does this a lot.
    • Justified in Brooke Fraser's case. She also serves as one of the worship leaders for Hillsong Church Australia in Sydney and writes many well-known worship anthems like "Hosanna" and "None But Jesus."
  • Parodied in The Magnetic Fields' song "Kiss Me Like You Mean It":

He is my lord, He is my savior,
And He rewards my good behavior.
My secret soul, I know He's seen it.
He says, come here, baby, and kiss me like you mean it.

  • Parodied by Christian satirist the Reverend Gerald Ambulance:

Jesus is my boyfriend!
 Jesus is my boyfriend!
Jesus is my boyfriend!
...but obviously not in that way.

  • Much of the output of British Christian Rock band Delirious? is overtly religious, but they managed to have several top-20 hits in the mid-90s with God Is Love Songs like See The Star, Promise and Deeper.
  • Have I Told You Lately by Van Morrison. The Rod Stewart cover, however, is meant as a regular love song.
  • "Some Kind of Wonderful" was later re-recorded by one of the singers who had originally performed it (I forget which one) as a religious song with some of the words changed... he probably should have changed more of them...
  • "Taking Over Me" by Evanescence.
  • Amy Grant has been popular both in the Christian music and mainstream music scene since the 1980s, and has recorded both "God Is Love" Songs and Silly Love Songs of the more romantic variety - as well as even a few "I love my child" songs. As such, it's not surprising for many to confuse just who the love songs were written for.
  • This troper is utterly convinced that "Not Alone" by All That Remains is implicitly one of these, despite being expressed with traditional heavy rock/metal themes.

I'm not alone
With the touch of your hand
I am whole again

  • In at least one interview, Peter Gabriel said that this was partly true of his "In Your Eyes".
  • Many songs by Not Christian Rock band Flyleaf, including "All Around Me", "Sorrow", and "Missing", are not explicity about religion, but can easily be interpreted that way.
  • "Love Song For A Savior" by Jars Of Clay, surprisingly.
  • Although they might actually be romantic lyrics played straight, quite a few lines in songs by Killswitch Engage seem to imply this, what with how closely they mesh with the heavy spiritual (Christian?) themes.
  • David Bowie's "Word on a Wing", which he wrote during his Creator Breakdown in the mid-'70s.
  • Several of Lifehouse's songs could be read that way, especially Everything and Storm.
    • In fact, in an interview Lifehouse member Jason Wade once said that he was surprised that so many people took their first big hit Hanging by a Moment as a love song, because to him it was a very spiritual song.
  • Arguably Relient K's "Must Have Done Something Right" is supposed to be this.
  • "The King Of Carrot Flowers, Part Two" by Neutral Milk Hotel opens with the singer proclaiming "I love you Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, I love you". Considering it's from an album which frequently alludes to Anne Frank and Reincarnation (as well as mountains covered in semen and lesbian prostitutes) it's either a very overt - and incongruous - example of this trope or an amusingly subtle subversion.
    • At least one Christian rock band has covered it straight however, seemingly without catching the double meaning of the phrase Jesus Christ.
  • Jamie Grace's "Hold Me" sounds more like a typical Silly Love Songs (and could easily work as one with no lyrical revision whatsoever), but is intended to be about the singer's relationship to God and is often played on Christian stations.
  • Swans' "The Final Sacrifice" is a rather bizarre inversion of this trope, being as it is either a comparison of a sadistic lover to Jesus or about a sadomasochistic relationship with Jesus.
  • "Greece (Just By The Book)" by the arty Icelandic Post Punk band Kukl (fronted by a then-unknown Björk) is a relentless and thoroughly creepy parody of this trope.

Poetry

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

    • Of course, unlike most of the above examples, he was doing this intentionally, and was probably inspired by the "church as the Bride of Christ" imagery from The Bible. And of course a lot of Donne's poetry was just straight up Intercourse with You stuff. (See "The Flea")
    • And yes, "Batter my heart" does contain strong undertones of Victim Falls For Rapist.
  • St. John of the Cross should probably go down in history for writing the only NSFW religious poetry in Christendom.
    • Not really. His style of writing is not that uncommon among Christian mystics. He's just one of the more famous ones.

Stand Up Comedy

  • Demitri Martin parodied this.

Theater

Western Animation

  • The Simpsons did a joke on this: First Ned hears a Christian folk singer announce "a love song about a dude I met in a sleazy motel" and then being surprised when she sings about God. Later she reveals that her band dumped her to sing pop rock, which they achieved by just changing the word "Jesus" to "baby", with the implication that the reverse would be true as well.

Homer (hearing Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life"): I bet the guy she was singing that about was real happy.
Marge: Well, actually, she was singing about God.
Homer: Oh, well, He's always happy. No, wait, He's always mad...

  • South Park parodied this ruthlessly in the episode, "Christian Rock Hard", where Cartman creates a Christian rock group and achieves massive success replacing the word "baby" in popular songs with the word "Jesus". Unfortunate Implications abound as the songs he picks to adapt get more and more explicit.

Other

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