Status Updates From The Universal Christ: How a...

“an utterly new idea from Paul, was that the Gospel was not about following some criteria outside of the human person—which he calls "the law," but that the locus of authority had changed to inside the human person. … The real and "new" law is an actual participation with Someone inside of us: the "love of God that has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5 and throughout).”

“Our present highly partisan politics, angry culture wars, and circling of the wagons around white privilege are just the final gasps of the old, dying paradigm.”

“I do believe Paul was implicitly an evolutionary thinker…Real power is now available and false power has been exposed in Paul's thinking, and now it is just a matter of time till false power falls apart. I have witnessed much of this evolution of consciousness in my own small lifetime—toward nonviolence, inclusivity, mysticism, and ever more selfless love, as well as more correct naming of the shadow side of things”

“In his groundbreaking study "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," the renowned Harvard scholar and pastor Krister Stendahl (1921-2008) wrote that Paul hardly ever speaks of personal guilt, or personal and private salvation-we are just trained to hear him that way!”

“Did you ever notice that Jesus himself was not really that upset at the bad behavior that most of us call sin? Instead, he directed his critical attention toward people who did not think they were sinners, who could not see their own shadows or dark sides, or acknowledge their complicity in the world's domination systems.” Jesus exposed the root causes of evil (almost always some form of idolatry)…”

“Non-attachment (freedom from full or final loyalties to human-made domination systems) is the best way I know of protecting people from religious zealotry or any kind of antagonistic thinking or behavior.”

“I would insist that the foundation of Jesus's social program is what I will call non-idolatry, or the withdrawing of your enthrallment from all kingdoms except the Kingdom of God. This is a much better agenda than feeling you have to attack things directly, or defeat other nation-states, the banking system, the military-industrial complex, or even the religious system.”

“Paul seems to have believed humans are caught in a double bind, and he was convinced that only corporate goodness could ever stand up to corporate evil—thus his emphasis on community building and "church." ”

“We now see that these systems (corporations, nation-states, institutions) have a life of their own, and are usually unaccountable to reason or even law—as much as we try to make them accountable. The ancients were not naïve about such things.”

“If you look at all Paul's texts on evil or "the problem," you see that sin for Paul was actually a combination of group blindness or corporate illusion, and the powerlessness of the individual to stand against it (Romans 7:14ff.) along with systemic evil (Ephesians 6:12 and Colossians 1:21ff.). Evil is not just individual nastiness.”

“In recent centuries, Christians have largely read him as if he was focused on what it takes for individuals to "go to heaven" and avoid hell. But Paul never once talks about our notion of hell! Most people fail to notice that. He would have agreed with Jesus, I think, that humans are punished by their sins more than for their sins. Goodness is its own reward, and evil is its own punishment…”

“His is a classic description of conversion, and it follows the typical progression from self-love, to group love, to universal love. But Paul did it rather quickly, whereas most of us take a lifetime.”

“Rather than reading Paul's thought primarily as arguments about sin and salvation, as Christians have long tended to do, I want to read Paul as a witness to both personal and cultural transformation, which he himself went through.”

“Mary Magdalene serves as a witness to personal love and intimacy, which for most people is the best and easiest start on the path toward universal love. Then in the garden at Easter, she experienced a sudden shift of recognition toward the universal Presence of Christ. He, in fact, is the gardener! He has become every man and every woman!”

“If your Jesus remains too small, too sentimental, or too bound by time and culture, you do not get very far at all. For Jesus to become Christ, he must surpass the bounds of space and time, ethnicity, nationality, class, and gender. Frankly, he must rise above any religion formed in his name that remains tribal, clannish, xenophobic, or exclusionary. Otherwise, he is not the "Savior of the World" (John 4:42) at all”

“she knew and trusted Jesus's voice, even when she couldn't recognize him. How different that is from…common empirical knowing, which limits itself to … proof, to its own form of reason, and to… specific divine revelation. …if we don't learn how to send people on inner journeys or love journeys, the whole religious project will continue to fall apart, because we have no living witnesses of a transformed life.”

“It is also worth mentioning that the twelve men are consistently portrayed in the Gospel accounts as very slow to respond, and usually filled with doubt and hesitation (Mark 16:11, 13-14) and even resistance, denial, and betrayal, yet that is not brought up as an impediment to their leadership. But Mary seemed to recognize Jesus's new kind of Presence the moment he uttered her name.”

“Most still imagined that all of the apostles were male, and therefore priesthood and ministry should be reserved for men (as if gender were a quality of the True Self, the restored Self, or the ontological self in God!). This argument is undone, it seems to me, by Christ appearing first to Mary after the Resurrection, and by his charge for her to be his first witness.”

“If God is God, then the Divine Presence must necessarily be everywhere and universally accessible. If you can physically "touch" God, it's easy to think God is just here and not there, mine but not yours.”

“like Mary, we usually need to start with the concrete encounter before we move to the universal experience… Spiritual knowing is an inner encounter and a calm inner knowing… We need this intimate inner knowing because we can't be left at the visual level or we will always think we can localize, limit, or capture God as a private possession (see John 20:29), or as something that can or must be "proven" to others”

“He was saying that the Christ is untouchable in singular form because he is omnipresent in all forms as we soon see as the "gardener" at the tomb (John 20:15), as a wayfarer on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-15), and as a man tending a cooking fire by the side of a lake (John 21:4, 9).”

“What happens next? Translations say "she turned," or "she knew," or "turning to face him," she cries out, "Rabonni!" which means "Master" (John 20:13-16). Instantly, Mary sees the one before her in a different way, you might say relationally instead of merely physically. She realizes it is still Jesus, but he has fully become the Christ.”

“In John's account, two angels appear and ask her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She replies, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." She then turns around and sees a man whom she doesn't recognize. Mary supposes he is the gardener (John 20:15) and asks him where he has taken Jesus. Then, in one of the most dramatic moments in the Gospels, the man simply says her name, "Mary!" ”