Expelling the Cosmic Superman

Well, it's been a long and lovely summer here in New Zealand. Lucky has been at the beach, doing his thing, chilling out and all that.

While Lucky has been playing the Auckland press has been having a go at our assistant bishop and dean, Richard Randerson. It is both sad and surprising that many of the writers submitting letters to the paper have little understanding of Christianity’s God. Dean Richard’s critique of a Supreme Being with anthropomorphic attributes has led to cries for his resignation.

I find theologian John Macquarie’s distinction between ‘God as a being’ and ‘God as being’ helpful. ‘God as a being’ reduces God to some sort of cosmic superman, with the power to control, create, love, etc. ‘God as being’ however points to the understanding of God as a transformational love energy that infuses our world.

The superman idea, which admittedly can be easily supposed from the traditional metaphors of ‘almighty’, ‘father’, and ‘lord’, is essentially idolatry. It makes God into our creation. It is about fitting God into our moulds, and keeping God there. It is a small God.

In the Bible this moulding of God repeatedly happens, and repeatedly the spirit of transformational love iconoclastically breaks those moulds. God is bigger than anthropomorphic constructs. It is easy to read the Bible and collect all the references to prove that supergod exists. It is also not that difficult to read the Bible and find the ongoing iconoclastic tradition. We need to expel the cosmic superman back to the Krypton of our needy imagination.