Goodbye Glam God

For those of us who remember the 80's, we would no doubt remember Glam Rock that was all about looking good. Ok, so maybe it was more about being flashy and extravagant, rather than looking good. Truth be told most of the artists looked like second rate comic book characters.

Seemingly unrelated, I have been reflecting on who God is and his relationship to us lately. When I consider how we depict God I feel as though in our attempt to convince people of how "cool" and "awesome" God is we have gone to the extreme of losing who God is in the flashiness of communicating his message. In our desire to share God we have been making him a flashy, over the top Glam God. I can understand the immediate objection being "God is so awesome that we can never over do it with God"! While I agree that God is beyond our ability to describe, in trying to emphasize God's "holy other"ness we often fail to emphasize his intimate relationship to his creation.

This failure to recognize that this infinite being, who is the source of all that is, has entered into his creation out of his longing to be in restored relationship with his creation, results in us reducing YHWH to the cold, distant, God of Aristotle. He's not wanting to make us a club member or make us "behave". He's wanting us to be in an interactive and intimate relationship with him. Although this may mess with some people's definition of immutable (I question how much our definition of immutable is scriptural & how much is a result of Greek philosophical indoctrination), I will say that our relationship to God is such that God is changed (not in character) by being in relationship with us. I do not mean that some how God is deficient, in himself, by not being in relationship with us. I am merely stating that God experiences joy and love that is unique to the relationship he has with the individual that he would not experience in any other relationship.

In our communication of who God is we need to say goodbye to the Glam God and embrace and emphasize God, the "holy other",who took on flesh and dwelt for awhile among us and knowing no sin became sin for us, so that we can live in intimate relationship with him.

In the words of Bonhoeffer, "Our relation to God is not a 'religious' relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best Being imaginable- that is not authentic transcendence- but our relation to God is a new life in 'existence' for others' through participation in the being of Jesus."