The Transcendence of God: What It Is and What It Means

What it is:
So the word, "transcendent", comes from Latin, specifically "transcendere", which means to climb over. To describe God as transcendent is to say that He "climbs over" ordinary existence. This word helps one apprehend the idea that God is impossible to comprehend. Because He is ultimately the Creator and outside of His creation, we can only see and understand bits and pieces of Him. The name of God is an example of this. When Moses asks God what His name is in Exodus 3:14, God responds with the Tetragrammaton, literally "four letters", YHWH, which is vocalized as "Yahweh" and later latinized as "Jehovah". The name is a conjugation of the verb "to be", showing that in this verse, as well as in others, God characterizes himself, most commonly, by the fact that He is. He not only is, but He also was, and He also will be. This is one of the characteristics of God that is, perhaps, the basis of His ultimate authority. As the Creator and the originator of the universe that we live in, He essentially has the right and the ability to do whatever He wants with it. This is the concept of God's sovereignty. He, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, can and does do what He wants when He wants. Of course, as with many of the attributes of God, this can affect the individual negatively and positively.

What it means:
One of the advantages of serving a transcendent and sovereign God is the fact that no matter what happens, He is ultimately in control. In the times that we feel powerless, we must remember that we serve the One with all power. It is even more comforting to keep in mind that if one loves God and is called according to his purpose, God works all things for his/her good. But the flipside of this is that we sometimes have a twisted sense of what is good. Too often, we think our happiness, satisfaction, and self-actualization is the ultimate good, so when something happens to us that disrupts that, we blame God. The story of Job illustrates this concept beautifully and tragically. Job, by all counts a righteous man, has his family killed, possessions lost, and health afflicted due to an agreement between God and Satan. His friends offer little comfort, telling him that it is his fault and he needs to repent, when Job maintains that he has done nothing wrong. In the end, God appears in order to assert his sovereignty and eventually bless Job beyond his former possessions, inconveniently leaving out any clarification as to why Job was being afflicted. Often we feel like God does this to us minus the blessings. We suffer (perhaps knowing that this is an inevitability...after all, it's promised that we will in numerous places in the Bible), we demand to know why, and God remains silent. It makes us reconsider whether or not God is really good. But what ultimately is "good"? Do we really have the right to question the One who laid the foundation of the Earth?