Oh my name it is nothin’ My age it means less The country I come from It's called the Midwest I’s taught and brought up there The laws to abide And that the land that I live in Has God on its side Oh the history books tell it They tell it so well The cavalries charged The Indians fell The cavalries charged The Indians died Oh the country was young With God on its side Oh the Spanish-American War had its day And the Civil War too Was soon laid away And the names of the heroes I’s made to memorize With guns in their hands And God on their side Oh the First World War, boys It closed out its fate The reason for fighting I never got straight But I learned to accept it Accept it with pride For you don’t count the dead When God’s on your side When the Second World War Came to an end We forgave the Germans And we were friends Though they murdered six million In the ovens they fried The Germans now too Have God on their side I’ve learned to hate Russians All through my whole life If another war starts It’s them we must fight To hate them and fear them To run and to hide And accept it all bravely With God on my side But now we got weapons Of the chemical dust If fire them we’re forced to Then fire them we must One push of the button And a shot the world wide And you never ask questions When God’s on your side Through many dark hour I’ve been thinkin’ about this That Jesus Christ Was betrayed by a kiss But I can’t think for you You’ll have to decide Whether Judas Iscariot Had God on his side So now as I’m leavin’ I’m weary as Hell The confusion I’m feelin’ Ain’t no tongue can tell The words fill my head And fall to the floor If God’s on our side He’ll stop the next war (additional verse, written by Aaron Neville) In the nineteen-sixties Came the Vietnam War Can somebody tell me What we're fightin' for? So many young men died So many mothers cried Now I ask the question Was God on our side?
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It was Abraham Lincoln who said: "Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right". This statement says it all, and provokes the thoughts of Dylan.
During World War I, Irving Berlin wrote "God Bless America" while serving in the U.S. Army. It soon became an American patriotic song. In the run-up to World War II, he revived it as a peace song. When Dylan was writing this song, USA was in the midst of Vietnam war. Meanwhile, the Cuban Missile Crisis in October-November 1962 led the world to the brink of nuclear disaster.
Rather than mocking the ‘God Bless America’ attitude, Dylan instead questions it directly: “was God on our side?” He shows us, in the first seven stanzas of this song, the horrible consequences of such a narrow minded world view of ‘we have to do it because God is on our side’. In the final two stanzas Dylan draws some sort of a conclusion. He then does some deep thinking on the relation between the will of God – destiny – and our own personal, individual, responsibility.
In an interview in 2001, Dylan talked about his concept of God:
You hear a lot about God these days: God the beneficient; God the all-great; God the Almighty; God the most powerful; God the giver of life; God the creator of death. I mean, we’re hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary. So people better be able to deal with that, too.Bob Dylan and Joan Baez performed the song as a duet at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1963 and July 1964. The words from the song "whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side" inspired Tim Rice to write the lyrics of "Jesus Christ Superstar" from Judas's perspective.