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

by Richard Rohr

because He was in them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too, here

Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life.

must be approached as something of a reclamation project. When the Western church separated from the

we gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus, when perhaps it is as ubiquitous as light itself—and uncircumscribable by human boundaries.

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?

Especially as we begin, you must allow some of the words in this book to remain partially mysterious, at least for a while. I know this can be dissatisfying and unsettling to our egoic mind, which wants to be in control every step of the way. Yet this is precisely the contemplative way of reading and listening, and thus being drawn forward into a much Larger Field.

it. Jesus did not come to earth so theologians alone could understand and make their good distinctions, but so that “they all may be one” (John 17:21).

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). Seeing in this way has reframed, reenergized, and broadened my own religious belief, and I believe it could be Christianity’s

Remember, light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything

But instead of saying that God came into the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came out of an already Christ-soaked world.

in Christianity, we have made the mistake of limiting the Creator’s presence to just one human manifestation, Jesus.

Jesus together with Christ gave us one human but fully accurate window into the Eternal Now that we call God

Jesus is a map for the time-bound and personal level of life, and Christ is the blueprint for all time and space and life itself.

God is inherent in all things,

Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual,

God is Relationship itself, a dynamism of Infinite Love between Divine Diversity, as the doctrine of the Trinity demonstrates.

Thus salvation might best be called “restoration,”

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.

Jesus had no trouble whatsoever with otherness. In fact, these “lost sheep” found out they were not lost to him at all, and tended to become his best followers.

If the overly personal (even sentimental) Jesus has shown itself to have severe limitations and problems, it is because this Jesus was not also universal. He became cozy and we lost the cosmic.

of God, and always will be, even when you don’t believe it.

the illuminating light that enlightens all things,

Perhaps the primary example of our lack of attention to the Christ Mystery can be seen in the way we continue to pollute and ravage planet earth, the very thing we all stand on and live from.

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. We are still trying

“Father, may they all be one,”

Were Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, Mayans and Babylonians, African and Asian civilizations, and the endless Native peoples on all continents and isolated islands for millennia just throwaways or dress rehearsals for “us”? Is God really that ineffective, boring, and stingy?

Just because you do not have the right word for God does not mean you are not having the right experience.

Anything that draws you out of yourself in a positive way—for all practical purposes—is operating as God for you at that moment.

“My dear people, we are already the children of God, and what we are to be in the future is still to be revealed, and when it is revealed—all we will know is that we are like God, for we shall finally see God as he really is!”

We end up with a Jesus who was merciful while on earth, but who punishes in the next world.

deliberately practice actually enjoying a positive response and a grateful heart.

the good, the true, and the beautiful.

If the human person is a “pile of manure,” even the “snow of Christ” only covers it and does not undo it.

God does not come uninvited.

This pattern tells me that unless we see dignity as being given universally, objectively, and from the beginning by God, humans will constantly think it is up to us to decide.

The best criticism of the bad is still the practice of the better.

We must reclaim Jesus as an inclusive Savior instead of an exclusionary Judge, as a Christ who holds history together as the cosmic Alpha and Omega.

In other words, it’s more about waking up than about cleaning up.

Parenting and family are the primary school for the love instinct, and always will be.

If God is a shaming figure, then most of us naturally learn to deny, deflect, or pass on that shame to others.

But if you nurture hatred toward yourself, it won’t be long before it shows itself as hatred toward others.

change. In fact, the first public word out of his mouth was the Greek imperative verb metanoeite, which literally translates as “change your mind” or “go beyond your mind” (Matthew 3:2, 4:17, and Mark 1:15). Unfortunately, in the fourth century, St. Jerome translated the word into Latin as paenitentia (“repent” or “do penance”), initiating a host of moralistic connotations that have colored Christians’ understanding of the Gospels ever since. The word metanoeite, however, is talking about a primal change of mind, worldview, or your way of processing—and only by corollary about a specific change in behavior. The common misunderstanding puts the cart before the horse; we think we can change a few externals while our underlying worldview often remains fully narcissistic and self-referential.

Faith became about external requirements that could be enforced, punished, and rewarded, much more than an actual change of heart and mind,

“love”). God is not in competition with anybody, but only in deep-time cooperation with everybody who loves

Matthew 21:28–31:

He saw all things in the visible world as endless dynamic and operative symbols of the Real, a theater and training ground for a heaven that is already available to us in small doses in this life.

Likewise, an intellectual belief that Jesus rose from the dead is a good start, but until you are struck by the realization that the crucified and risen Jesus is a parable about the journey of all humans, and even the universe, it is a rather harmless—if not harmful—belief that will leave you and the world largely unchanged.

there must be a way to be both here and in the depth of here. Jesus is the here, Christ is the depth of here.

She is Everywoman and Everyman, and that is why I call her the feminine symbol for the universal incarnation.

Feminine power is deeply relational and symbolic—and thus transformative—in ways that men cannot control or even understand. I suspect that is why we fear it so much.