At the time the song was written, referencing "God" in a title or lyric was generally considered a taboo for pop music, and there had been at least one recent instance of a record being banned from radio for having words such as "hell" or "damn". Asher said that he and Wilson had "lengthy conversations" about the lyric, "because unless you were Kate Smith and you were singing 'God Bless America', no one thought you could say "'God' in a song. ... He said, 'We'll just never get any air play." He believed that Wilson agreed to the title after being told by other people that it was "an opportunity to be really far out it would cause some controversy, which he didn't mind." Dillon wrote that referring to God may have also been viewed as "a square move" due to the nascent decline of traditional religion in the United States.