What if God WERE one of us, moron!

The BBQ Pit
1

“What if God was one of us?”

I’d completely forgotten how much this stupid song used to piss me off but my local radio station has put it back in rotation so I get to rant all over again.

In the first place, two words: subjunctive voice. If the statement is speculative you don’t say “was” you say “were”. “What if God were one of us?” You should have learned this in junior high school. Oh, wait, I suppose you were too busy skipping school so you could learn how to barely play the guitar.

In the second place supposedly about 2000 years ago God WAS one of us! Ever heard of somebody named Jesus Christ? Or Christianity … does that ring a bell? It’s an entire religion based on the idea that – get this – for a while, God was one of us! Just a slob like one of us! Trying to make it on his own! That’s the whole fucking point of Christianity! God loved mankind enough to come live among us as a simple man and die a painful death.

So the answer to your question, “What if God was one of us?” is “Well, that would be Jesus.”

And I’m not even a Christian … .

2

Hmm, well maybe she meant it in a different (non-speculative) kind of way, such as, “(So) what if God WAS one of us?” :wink:

3

If it were true that Jesus was God, he sure as hell wasn’t “one of us”. I can’t speak for you, but I’m pretty sure I’m not part of the Holy Trinity. Not to mention all those sins I commit…

4

Well, “were” also doesn’t rhyme with “us.” Poetic license, and all that. Although that song is rather annoying anyway.

5

Tenses? We don’t need no stinkin’ tenses.

6

Yeah, but was Jesus “just a stranger on the bus”? Was he “trying to make his way home, like a holy rolling stone”?

I just about crapped myself with laughter the first time I heard it, and only later realized that it wasn’t a novelty song but an incisive social commentary.

7

“Was” doesn’t rhyme with “us” either.

And even if it did, she could go for an end-rhyme, such as:

What if God were one of us?
Would He deign to ride the bus? :smiley:

8

I’d hate to argue with you over this, but isn’t the idea that Jesus both wholly was and was not one of us?

9

Not exactly, but pretty close. “Alliterates”? Whatever…

10

In addition to being one of the dumbest rants I’ve ever heard, it is also one of the least timely. It’s about 6 or 7 years late.

11

Slant rhyme. But you don’t need a rhyme there.

“What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us?”

Why does the first line need a rhyme if the second one doesn’t?

Nah, it’s not poetic license. Just ignorance.

“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”

“Don’t you mean, AS a cigarette should?”

“What do you want, good grammar, or good taste?”

12

All the cool people were ripping this song 6 or 7 years ago. Now it’s just passe.

I think Moby Dick is the best American novel. Oh crap! Can I say that here, or is it too late?

13

Ah, thanks for the vocabulary lesson. (Seriously:) )

But need a rhyme there? Maybe she wanted a rhyme there. What the fuck? She didn’t need to write a song at all.

14

Actually, the song title does have it correct. “Were” is the form of the verb “to be” used in English if one is expressing a conditional event.

15

I think the fact that she seems to have missed a little movement called “Christianity” is entirely beside the point.

What chews my pickle is that it’s so droolingly, sophomorically, don’t-spill-the-bongwater-and-hey-pass-the-Frito’s amateurishly shallow. I’ve spouted deeper profundity on the toilet. I can just see some navel-gazing college freshman with a pot perma-grin looking blearily up and saying, “Hey man. What if, like, God was one of us, man?”

“Whoa.”

16

I’ve always preferred

What if God smoked cannibis?
Hit the bong like some of us?

17

Yeah, that might have been better.

18

Joan Osborne fan checking in, and correction please the name of the song is* One Of Us*

It’s a * Wild World
So What you gonna do
Son of a preacher Man
Get Up Jack * and

  • Flyaway *
    as i’m
  • Dreamin’ About The Day* the
  • Match Burns Twice* on your
  • Fingerprints
    Crazy Baby*
19

It’s also a cover - Joan Osborne didn’t write it.

20

Quick web search turns up that it was written by Eric Bazilian (of the Hooters) for Joan Osborne. She was the first to record it (on 1995’s “Relish” album). Not exactly a cover. Appears to have been recorded in 1996 by Prince (or was he “formerly known as” then?).