A God who is entirely transcendent (holy) is a God who is unattached from creation. While Christians want to affirm that God is in fact a relational God, the attributes which are applied to God refer to a God who is entirely transcendent. God is typically portrayed as a unilateral authoritative power that is unaffected and unchangeable in all regards. There is a balance to be found. If God is entirely transcendent, God cannot be known, if God is entirely immanent there is no distinction between God and creation.
God is transcendent as well as immanent. Thus we have a God who is "otherness." A God who, through holiness, is deserving of our undivided worship and love. However in his holiness, God is living present in our lives. While God is set apart, God enters into relationships. As Oord states, "God is not entirely independent because God is love and love is expressed in relationships." For a relationship to be meaningful there is a level of give and take, a level of dependence. This is essential to our theology of prayer. If God is not able to be affected by human interaction, prayer is meaningless and serves no purpose beyond obedience to what God has decided. "God is open to and affected by others because the creator and creation enjoy a mutual relationship.
The strength of the book "Relational Holiness" is the image it provides of God. In his holiness, God is a living and relational God. God has made himself known to us. God is a God of love and cannot act apart from that which is not loving. While God is set apart and above the created, God is relational and one with the created. What sets God apart is his Holy Love. God's love establishes his transcendence as well as his immanence. A God who is viewed as distant is not the God who sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross. Within the Church, we need to stop viewing God as a distant and unattached God. While we hold God as relational as well as Holy we often do not practice worshiping a God who is both. Moreover in our interaction with the world, we do not model relational holiness. We use holiness as an excuse to remove and alienate ourselves from society so that we might be away from the evil that plagues us in the world. However, God does not call us to be holy in regards of being above others, but in regards of being set apart to love him. In the Scriptural call to be holy, we are called to love others. Not to be legalistic, but to be loving and engaged with the culture of the World
God in his holiness, his otherness, does not distance himself from the world. God is active and intimate in the world working to transform the corruption in the world. God freely enters into give and take relationships. The manner in which we view God is essential to the God whom we worship and emulate. We are to emulate a God who is holy and living. We are to practice relational holiness thus we should not remove ourselves from people, but embrace and love people where they are at in life!
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