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The Coming of the Cosmic Christ
by Matthew Fox

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/867317.The_Coming_of_the_Cosmic_Christ?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Coming of the Cosmic Christ" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1179032200m/867317.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/867317.The_Coming_of_the_Cosmic_Christ?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Coming of the Cosmic Christ</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1865.Matthew_Fox">Matthew Fox</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5876226?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars The idea that an omnipotent, conscious entity would will the universe into existence and populate it with free-willed beings only to fixate on their hygienic and sexual proclivities and punish offenses with death and damnation is ridiculous on its face, and yet in the United States (the "most Christian" country on Earth) this is what God has largely been reduced to.
 
 Meanwhile, Jesus the Nazarene has morphed from a rabble-rousing proto-socialist Jew into Jesus the Christ, an eroticized, fetishized Aryan Übermensch eunuch masochist (don't take my word for it, just go see The Passion of the Christ). 
 
 What Fox does in his books is return these two figures to their roots. God is first and foremost the Creator, and as beings cast in God's image, so, too, are we. Life and everything that makes it worth living are gifts from God, they are God's creations, conceived by God and given freely to mankind. 
 
 Jesus is exemplary, not because he is God willingly "reduced" to human stature, but because he embodies the fullness and completeness of virtuous human potential by embracing and experiencing and contributing to God's creation rather than withdrawing from it and condemning it, as so many "religious" people would have us believe is what’s required to live a virtuous life. 
 
 Because Jesus is of the God-head (a term that Fox uses throughout his works to describe not only the Trinitarian concept of God, but also the male/female dichotomy of God that is well-documented historically, but has been denied and obfuscated by the chauvinism of neo-platonist Church leaders), his life is the good life; that he lived and how he lived is as important as his death and resurrection.
 
 Fox asserts that Jesus crucifiction was a reaction by those whose hold on temporal power was threatened by a divine example that contradicted so many assumptions about what God wants and expects from human beings (i.e.: those things that the powers-that-be would have people believe so that they can remain in power). 
 
 Jesus was a man, living in a theocracy, being called rabbi without the formal religious training and political stamp of approval required. He was a man stating with authority that the whole of the law - voluminous texts attributed directly to God and centuries worth of dissertations expounding on them by the greatest minds the ancient Israelites had produced - could be summed up in a single sentence: Treat other people exactly as you would like to be treated by them - this is the essence of all true religion. (Matthew 7:12). 
 
 We all know what happened to Jesus for his efforts.
 
 In The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, Fox asserts that this same dynamic is at work again on a global scale: an elite who claim to speak for God hold power by imposing an overwrought and largely artificial morality that is not what God wants (i.e.: is not the natural order of things), but what they want and maintaining their hold on power through legalistic machinations. And just as this situation had lead to the exploitation of the Israeli people and the rape of their country by the Romans and their puppets in the Israeli leadership 2,000 years ago, so to has it lead to the exploitation of the masses and the rape of the planet today. Just as Jesus Christ set an example for a more authentic and righteous way to live then, so, too does he today, writ large as the "Cosmic Christ."
 
 It's not hard to figure out where Fox goes with this, and what its implications are for modern-day sadducees, pharisees, and other hypocrites. Fox illustrates quite clearly that the Jesus of the gospels is not the patron of an elite few who are to rule in his name, but an everyman whose example anyone can follow. 
 
 I give The Coming of the Cosmic Christ - and most of Fox's other works five stars.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/26469?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Jeff's review
rating:
bookshelves: spirituality-religion
recommended for: anyone

The idea that an omnipotent, conscious entity would will the universe into existence and populate it with free-willed beings only to fixate on their hygienic and sexual proclivities and punish offenses with death and damnation is ridiculous on its face, and yet in the United States (the "most Christian" country on Earth) this is what God has largely been reduced to.

Meanwhile, Jesus the Nazarene has morphed from a rabble-rousing proto-socialist Jew into Jesus the Christ, an eroticized, fetishized Aryan Übermensch eunuch masochist (don't take my word for it, just go see The Passion of the Christ).

What Fox does in his books is return these two figures to their roots. God is first and foremost the Creator, and as beings cast in God's image, so, too, are we. Life and everything that makes it worth living are gifts from God, they are God's creations, conceived by God and given freely to mankind.

Jesus is exemplary, not because he is God willingly &quo...more

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