The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

by Richard Rohr

Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to every life.

What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe? What if Christ is a name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love? What if Christ refers to an infinite horizon that pulls us from within and pulls us forward too? What if Christ is another name for everything—in its fullness?

The essential function of religion is to radically connect us with everything. (Re-ligio = to re-ligament or reconnect.) It is to help us see the world and ourselves in wholeness, and not just in parts. Truly enlightened people see oneness because they look out from oneness, instead of labeling everything as superior and inferior, in or out.

A cosmic notion of the Christ competes with and excludes no one, but includes everyone and everything (Acts 10:15, 34) and allows Jesus Christ to finally be a God figure worthy of the entire universe.

Christ is everywhere. In Him every kind of life has a meaning and a solid connection.

In the monastic tradition, this practice of lingering and going to the depths of a text is called Lectio Divina.

Contemplation is waiting patiently for the gaps to be filled in, and it does not insist on quick closure or easy answers.

Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. What else could it really be? “Christ” is a word for the Primordial Template (“Logos”) through whom “all things came into being, and not one thing had its being except through him” (John 1:3).

Remember, light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else. This is why in John’s Gospel, Jesus Christ makes the almost boastful statement “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12). Jesus Christ is the amalgam of matter and spirit put together in one place, so we ourselves can put it together in all places, and enjoy things in their fullness. It can even enable us to see as God sees, if that is not expecting too much.

Scientists have discovered that what looks like darkness to the human eye is actually filled with tiny particles called “neutrinos,” slivers of light that pass through the entire universe. Apparently there is no such thing as total darkness anywhere, even though the human eye thinks there is.

My point is this: When I know that the world around me is both the hiding place and the revelation of God, I can no longer make a significant distinction between the natural and the supernatural, between the holy and the profane.

But God loves things by becoming them. God loves things by uniting with them, not by excluding them.

When Paul wrote, “There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything” (Colossians 3:11), was he a naïve pantheist, or did he really understand the full implication of the Gospel of Incarnation? God seems to have chosen to manifest the invisible in what we call the “visible,” so that all things visible are the revelation of God’s endlessly diffusive spiritual energy.

Christians got pretty sloppy in their thinking. Our faith became a competitive theology with various parochial theories of salvation, instead of a universal cosmology inside of which all can live with an inherent dignity.

He says it is those who “do it right” that matter, not those who “say it right.” Yet verbal orthodoxy has been Christianity’s preoccupation, at times even allowing us to burn people at the stake for not “saying it right.”

We ended up spreading our national cultures under the rubric of Jesus, instead of a universally liberating message under the name of Christ.

Without a sense of the inherent sacredness of the world—of every tiny bit of life and death—we struggle to see God in our own reality, let alone to respect reality, protect it, or love it. The consequences of this ignorance are all around us, seen in the way we have exploited and damaged our fellow human beings, the dear animals, the web of growing things, the land, the waters, and the very air.

What I am calling in this book an incarnational worldview is the profound recognition of the presence of the divine in literally “every thing” and “every one.” It is the key to mental and spiritual health, as well as to a kind of basic contentment and happiness. An incarnational worldview is the only way we can reconcile our inner worlds with the outer one, unity with diversity, physical with spiritual, individual with corporate, and divine with human.

Christ is God, and Jesus is the Christ’s historical manifestation in time. Jesus is a Third Someone, not just God and not just man, but God and human together.

But if we cannot put these two seeming opposites of God and human together in Jesus Christ, we usually cannot put these two together in ourselves, or in the rest of the physical universe.

Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental beliefs, rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is inherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good.

Faith, hope, and love are the very nature of God, and thus the nature of all Being. Such goodness cannot die. (Which is what we mean when we say “heaven.”)

No one religion will ever encompass the depth of such faith.

then “I am the way, the truth, and the life” is a very fair statement that should neither offend nor threaten anyone. After all, Jesus is not talking about joining or excluding any group; rather, he is describing the “Way” by which all humans and all religions must allow matter and Spirit to operate as one.

That as long as we keep God imprisoned in a retributive frame instead of a restorative frame, we really have no substantial good news; it is neither good nor new, but the same old tired story line of history. We pull God down to our level.

Faith at its essential core is accepting that we are accepted! We cannot deeply know ourselves without also knowing the One who made us, and we cannot fully accept ourselves without accepting God’s radical acceptance of every part of us. And God’s impossible acceptance of ourselves is easier to grasp if we first recognize it in the perfect unity of the human Jesus with the divine Christ. Start with Jesus, continue with yourself, and finally expand to everything else.

In other words, we have faith in Christ so we can have the faith of Christ.

he did ask us several times to follow him, and never once to worship him.

If you pay attention to the text, you’ll see that John offers a very evolutionary notion of the Christ message. Note the active verb that is used here: “The true light that enlightens every person was coming (erxomenon) into the world” (1:9). In other words, we’re talking not about a one-time Big Bang in nature or a one-time incarnation in Jesus, but an ongoing, progressive movement continuing in the ever-unfolding creation. Incarnation did not just happen two thousand years ago. It has been working throughout the entire arc of time, and will continue. This is expressed in the common phrase the “Second Coming of Christ,” which was unfortunately read as a threat (“Wait till your dad gets home!”), whereas it should more accurately be spoken of as the “Forever Coming of Christ,” which is anything but a threat. In fact, it is the ongoing promise of eternal resurrection

A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail you, always demand more of you, and give you no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.

Isn’t that ironic? The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by its finality in the cross, which is God’s great act of solidarity instead of judgment.

We must be honest and humble about this: Many people of other faiths, like Sufi masters, Jewish prophets, many philosophers, and Hindu mystics, have lived in light of the Divine encounter better than many Christians. And why would a God worthy of the name God not care about all of the children?

The Christ is always way too much for us, larger than any one era, culture, empire, or religion. Its radical inclusivity is a threat to any power structure and any form of arrogant thinking.

I fully believe, however, that there has never been a single soul who was not possessed by the Christ, even in the ages when Jesus was not. Why would you want your religion, or your God, to be any smaller than that?

I have never been separate from God, nor can I be, except in my mind. I would love for you to bring this realization to loving consciousness!

Hope cannot be had by the individual if everything is corporately hopeless. It is hard to heal individuals when the whole thing is seen as unhealable.

St. Augustine would courageously put it in his Retractions: “For what is now called the Christian religion existed even among the ancients and was not lacking from the beginning of the human race.”

Just because you do not have the right word for God does not mean you are not having the right experience. From the beginning, YHWH let the Jewish people know that no right word would ever contain God’s infinite mystery.

In God you do not include less and less; you always see and love more and more.

When you look your dog in the face, for example, as I often looked at my black Labrador, Venus, I truly believe you are seeing another incarnation of the Divine Presence, the Christ. When you look at any other person, a flower, a honeybee, a mountain—anything—you are seeing the incarnation of God’s love for you and the universe you call home.

Presence is never self-generated, but always a gift from another, and faith is always relational at the core.

Divine perfection is precisely the ability to include what seems like imperfection.

Creation—be it planets, plants, or pandas—was not just a warm-up act for the human story or the Bible. The natural world is its own good and sufficient story, if we can only learn to see it with humility and love.

All contemplation reflects a seventh-day choice and experience, relying on grace instead of effort.

The Christian life is simply a matter of becoming who we already are

A trust in inner coherence itself. “It all means something!” (Faith) A trust that this coherence is positive and going somewhere good. (Hope) A trust that this coherence includes me and even defines me. (Love)

Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned—even, and especially, when things go wrong. Love allows and accommodates everything in human experience, both the good and the bad, and nothing else can really do this. Nothing. Love flows unstoppably downward, around every obstacle—like water. Love and water seek not the higher place but always the lower. That’s why forgiveness is often the most powerful display of love in action.

The Crucified and Risen Christ uses the mistakes of the past to create a positive future, a future of redemption instead of retribution. He does not eliminate or punish the mistakes. He uses them for transformative purposes. People formed by such love are indestructible. Forgiveness might just be the very best description of what God’s goodness engenders in humanity.

All of us need someone or something to connect our hearts with our heads. Love grounds us by creating focus, direction, motivation, even joy—and if we don’t find these things in love, we usually will try to find them in hate.

One place where I often see a positive focus and purpose is in the hardworking happiness of young mothers and fathers. Their new child becomes their one North Star, and they know very clearly why they are waking up each morning. This is the God Instinct, which we might just call the “need to adore.” It is the need for one overarching focus, direction, and purpose in life, or what the Hebrew Scriptures describe as “one God before you” (Exodus 20:3). Parenting and family are the primary school for the love instinct, and always will be. They serve as the basic container, in which the soul, the heart, the body, and even the mind can flourish.