What God Wants

What God Wants is a song on the Roger Waters album "Amused To Death. This song criticizes the church for being a hypocrisy. It is split up into three parts, making the total time of the song to be 13 minutes and 48 seconds.

What God Wants, Part I

This part of the song appears second on the album, after "The Ballard Of Bill Hubbard" and before "Perfect Sense, Part I". This part tells us that the media has an effect on the person to the extent that the media choses what happens, even if that person does not agree. Roger Waters said about the first Gulf conflict, "'I'm very upset by religious dogma, I get angry, gobsmacked in fact when I hear George Bush saying that God was on their side during the Gulf war. It's amazing that in 1992, one of the most powerful men in the world can reduce political rhetoric to that level. But that's what he has to do, to get votes and maintain power and then use that power to help the American automobile industry." This song says that we as human beings do not care about that and just live with it.

What God Wants, Part II

This part of the song is the ninth song on the album, after "Too Much Rope" and before "What God Wants, Part III". This part, much like the first part, tells us that although God wants good, God also wants bad in the world. The song begins by hearing an evangelical priest preaching on television. The priest says the following:

"Do you believe in a better day
Do you have faith in a golden way
If you do then we must come together this day
Come together as one united
Television audience
Brought together by the sound of my voice
United united financially united socially
United spiritually and all possible ways
Through the power of money
And the power of prayers"

The priest not only replaces the word church with "Television audience", but also replaces the word God with "Money" thereby suggesting that God is money. This shows that the priest is twisting the word of God to simply fit his own need. Then, the song says that although "God don't want small potatoes", God also wants to associate It self with small towns that are filled with right-winged conservatives. The end of the song states that God wants for people not to find out what is really going on.

What God Wants, Part III

This is the final part of "What God Wants". It is the tenth song on the album, after "What God Wants, Part II" and before "Watching TV". This song has hope that someday, we (the human race) will be able to escape the influence of the media. It says towards the being of the song,
"And in banks across the world
Christians Moslems Hindus Jews
And people of every
Race creed color tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray".

Although the media is pumping out propaganda, the line, "But the monkey's not watching" seems to say that humans can, hopefully, be able to overcome the influence of the mass media.

The Big Picture

In all three tracks, the Alien profit tells the monkey "Don't be surprised", like it was obvious. In a few instances, the animal does what he is told to do. However, the last time, the monkey simply writes down what is being said, not absorbing it.

Censorship

This song was banned from being on BBC 1 because of it's "Touchy" lyrics. Waters was angry.

Lengths

What God Wants, Part One-6 minutes, 0 seconds
What God Wants, Part Two-3 minutes, 42 seconds
What God Wants, Part Three-4 minutes, 8 seconds

See Also

Amused To Death
Pink Floyd
God
Conservativism