Some time ago, many years ago actually, somebody said to me that they had a bone to pick with my “Big Kahuna”.
At first, I did not know what they were referring to, but apparently something had gone wrong in their life. They were struggling with the age-old question, “why is this happening to me?” They thought that they had gotten the rough end of the pineapple and they reckoned that my “Big Kahuna” should have been looking after them better.
I had never heard of God being referred to by that name, but God does get called a lot of names from “Loving Father” to “The Bloke Upstairs.” I sometimes refer to God as the one who is “Totally Other” because our finite minds cannot understand or comprehend the nature or person of God because he is so different from anything we know even though the Bible tells us that we are made in the image of God.
When Moses asked God at the burning bush what was the name of the one who was sending him back to the people of Israel in Egypt, God simply said that his name is “I am who I am”, sometimes translated as Jehovah or more correctly JAHWEH.
The true nature of God may be something of a mystery for us, but God has not left us totally in the dark. In the Bible, God is revealed as a Triune (three-in-one) God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This Triune God relates to us chiefly through the Son, Jesus Christ, (who was, and is, both true God and a true human being) and who lived, died, and was raised for us, to show us that God is above all a loving and forgiving God who wants to have a meaningful personal relationship with each one of us.