After my last post on worship, a couple of people asked what, specifically, I found troubling about Chris Tomlin’s Our God. It was a fair question, especially as I used to enjoy playing it.

Musically, I can understand why it became so popular. It is fun to play, has a memorable melody, the chorus is easy for a congregation to pick up, and the arrangement builds well. My concerns are theological, and they have become clearer as my own understanding of God has developed.

I had already become uncomfortable with the song before reading about Chris Tomlin leading worship at events associated with Christian nationalism in the United States. Those reports brought me back to it and made me think more carefully about why its language of power had begun to trouble me.

Over the last few years, my understanding of divine power has been shaped by my training within the Methodist tradition and by theologians such as Thomas Jay Oord. His account of the uncontrolling love of God has encouraged me to understand divine power through the self-giving and other-empowering love revealed in Jesus. God’s power creates relationship, enables response and seeks the flourishing of creation.

A recent paper on John’s Gospel for my studies at Queen’s has helped me articulate some of the concerns I already had about the song. The paper asked whether John should be understood as an inclusivist or exclusivist Gospel. I eventually argued that John is better understood as invitational. John makes strong claims about Jesus, while belief involves trust, continuing in his words, public witness and participation in his works.

This gives me a way of thinking about the opening of Our God, which refers to Jesus turning water into wine and opening the eyes of the blind. Both images draw us into John’s Gospel and its account of Jesus’ signs.

John presents these signs as revelations of who Jesus is, although seeing a sign does not necessarily lead to the kind of belief the Gospel is seeking. In John 2, people believe because they have seen the signs, yet Jesus does not entrust himself to them. Their response remains incomplete. In John 9, the man born blind gradually comes to recognise Jesus through healing, encounter and conflict. His belief becomes visible through his witness and his willingness to be identified with Jesus.

The signs reveal power, but they also invite people into trust, relationship and discipleship. They cannot be separated from the life into which Jesus calls those who encounter him.

The chorus leaves me with more questions. Its repeated claim is that “Our God is greater, our God is stronger.” God is also described as higher, as healer and as awesome in power.

All of this has a basis in Scripture. The Psalms proclaim God’s greatness, the prophets declare that no other god can be compared with the God of Israel, and the New Testament speaks of Christ being exalted. I find the cumulative emphasis difficult because almost every description of God is concerned with greatness, strength and power. The song offers little sense of the character of that power or the way it is exercised.

John’s Gospel has a great deal to say about this. The Jesus who turns water into wine is also the Jesus who kneels before his disciples and washes their feet. The Farewell Discourse speaks of his return to the Father, while the teaching surrounding that departure is concerned with love, service, abiding and shared works. Jesus invites his followers to continue in his life and to do

John 14:6 is often detached from its narrative setting and treated as a boundary defining who is included and who is excluded. Within the Farewell Discourse, Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet and is preparing them for his arrest and death. His claim to be the way, the truth and the life belongs within that story. The way of Jesus is expressed through love, service and the giving of himself for others.

The signs reveal the Father, and the footwashing also reveals the Father. Jesus’ power cannot be understood apart from the life he lives and the love he embodies. His glory leads towards the cross, where the violence of political and religious power is answered through self-giving love.

This helps me explain why the bridge of Our God makes me particularly uncomfortable. It draws on Romans 8 and asks who could stop us if God is for us, and what could stand against us if God is with us.

Paul’s argument in Romans 8 is addressed to people who know suffering. He speaks of hardship, persecution, famine, danger and death. His confidence rests in the conviction that none of these things can separate them from the love of God in Christ. God being “for us” does not mean that Christians will overcome every opponent or prevent anything from standing in their way. It means that suffering and death cannot break God’s relationship with them.

The wording of the song can be heard as a declaration that those who have God on their side cannot be stopped. I don’t think every congregation will hear it in that way. Many people will sing it as an expression of trust during difficult circumstances. The language remains open enough to be placed within several different stories.

One of those stories is Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism frequently draws on language of greatness, strength, victory and overcoming. Christian faith becomes tied to the identity and power of a nation, while political success can be presented as evidence of God’s favour. The language of spiritual victory then becomes a way of describing cultural influence, the defeat of political opponents or the restoration of a supposedly Christian nation.

Much of that language comes from the Bible. Its use within Christian nationalism removes it from the narrative contexts that give it meaning. The assurance offered to communities experiencing persecution can become a promise of political dominance. God’s greatness can be attached to national greatness. Overcoming suffering can become overcoming those perceived to stand against the movement.

This is where the repeated language of “our God” and God being “for us” becomes especially difficult. The “us” can mean the community held in God’s love through suffering. It can also become the nation, political movement or religious group that assumes God stands behind its ambitions. Once the second meaning takes hold, anyone who challenges the movement can be treated as someone standing against God.

I don’t think the lyrics of Our God are enough to describe it as a Christian nationalist song. I do think its emphasis on power and overcoming can be appropriated by Christian nationalism with very little adaptation. The song leaves the meaning of God’s power largely undefined, allowing the community and setting to supply the missing story.

Chris Tomlin’s involvement in events associated with Christian nationalism now forms part of that setting. A songwriter cannot control every interpretation of a song, and a song may take on meanings far beyond anything intended when it was written. Public actions still affect how words are heard. When the same language of greatness, strength and overcoming appears in congregational worship and at events presenting Christianity as part of a national political project, separating those contexts becomes increasingly difficult.

John’s Gospel asks more of belief than recognising that Jesus is powerful or affirming claims about his identity. Belief develops through continuing in his word and participating in his works. It draws people into a life shaped by love and service.

The same question can be asked of our worship. A song may say things about God that are drawn from Scripture, while leaving us with little sense of the life into which those claims invite us. When we sing of greatness and strength, the life of Jesus needs to give those words their meaning.

Every hymn and worship song leaves something unsaid. The question extends beyond whether Our God should be retained or removed from a music folder. It concerns the picture formed by everything we sing together.

Do our songs allow the God who washes feet to define what divine power looks like? Do they help us recognise power expressed through love, relationship and service? Or have we left enough space for other stories of power to take its place?