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

“From Augustine's theological no, the hole only got deeper. Martin Luther portrayed humans as a "pile of manure, John Calvin instituted his now-infamous doctrine of "total depravity," and poor Jonathan Edwards famously condemned New Englanders as "sinners in the hands of an angry God." No wonder Christians are accused of having a negative anthropology!”

“Yet historically, the teaching of original sin started us off on the wrong foot—with a no instead of a yes, with a mistrust instead of a trust. We have spent centuries trying to solve the "problem" that we're told is at the heart of our humanity. But if you start with a problem, you tend to never get beyond that mindset.”

“Instead of embracing God's master plan for humanity and creation—what we Franciscans still call the "Primacy of Christ" —Christians shrunk our image of both Jesus and Christ, and our "Savior" became a mere Johnny-come-lately "answer" to the problem of sin, a problem that we had largely created ourselves. That's a very limited role for Jesus. His death instead of his life was defined as saving us!”

“"My dear people, we are already the children of God, and what we are to be in the future is still to be revealed…that we are like God, for we shall finally see God as he really is!" (1John 3:2). And who is this God that we will finally see? It is somehow Being Itself, for God is the one, according to Paul, "in whom we live and move and have our being… 'We are all his children" (Acts 17:28).”

“The Christ mirror fully knows and loves us from all eternity, and reflects that image back to us. I cannot logically prove this to you, but I do know that people who live inside of this resonance are both happy and healthy. Those who do not resonate and reciprocate with things around them only grow in loneliness and alienation, and invariably tend toward violence in some form, if only toward themselves.”

“The true and essential work of all religion is to help us recognize and recover the divine image in everything.”

“the "Sabbath Rest." All contemplation reflects a seventh-day choice and experience, relying on grace instead of effort. Full growth implies timing and staging, acting and waiting, working and not working.”

“Every gift of food and water, every act of simple kindness, every ray of sunshine, every mammal caring for her young, all of it emerged from this original and intrinsically good creation.”

“Do we really think that God had nothing at all to say for 13.7 billion years, and started speaking only in the latest nanosecond of geological time? Did all history prior to our sacred texts provide no basis for truth or authority? Of course not. The radiance of the Divine Presence has been glowing and expanding since the beginning of time, before there were any human eyes to see or know about it.”

“how you do anything is how you do everything. As John's First Letter says, quite directly, "Anyone who says he loves God and hates his brother [or sister] is a liar" (4:20). In the end, either you love everything or there is reason to doubt that you love anything. This one love and one loveliness was described by many medieval theologians and others as the "Great Chain of Being." ”

“The proof that you are a Christian is that you can see Christ everywhere else. This is what we saw in Caryll Houselander's experience on the train, and in Jesus when he pointed to divinity in "the least of the brothers and sisters" (Matthew 25:40) and even in the so-called bad thief who was crucified next to him (Luke 23:43).”

“Only great love and great suffering are strong enough to take away our imperial ego's protections and open us to authentic experiences of transcendence.”

“This is not heresy, universalism, or a cheap version of Unitarianism. This is the Cosmic Christ, who always was, who became incarnate in time, and who is still being revealed. We would have helped history and individuals so much more if we had spent our time revealing how Christ is everywhere instead of proving that Jesus was God.”

“"All fullness is found in him, through him all things are reconciled, everything in heaven and everything on earth." (Colossians 1:19-20) This is not heresy, universalism, or a cheap version of Unitarianism. This is the Cosmic Christ, who always was, who became incarnate in time, and who is still being revealed.”

“Jesus can hold together one group or religion. Christ can hold together everything. In fact, Christ already does this; it is we who resist such wholeness, as if we enjoy our arguments and our divisions into parts. Yet throughout the Scriptures, we were given statements like these: "When everything is reconciled in him God will be all in all." (1 Corinthians 15:28)”

“History is still waiting for the Christian mind to shift back to what has always been true since the initial creation, which is the only thing that will ever make it a universal (or truly catholic) religion. The Universal Christ was just too big an idea, too monumental a shift for most of the first two thousand years.”

“Without a shared and Big Story, we all retreat into private individualism for a bit of sanity and safety. 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. Science now appears to love and respect physicality more than most religion does!”

“Paul, like us, never knew Jesus in the flesh. Like him, we only know the Christ through observing and honoring the depth of our own human experience. When you can honor and receive your own moment of sadness or fullness as a gracious participation in the eternal sadness or fullness of God, you are beginning to recognize yourself as a participating member of this one universal Body. You are moving from I to We.”

“[Paul] says "God revealed his in me" (Galatians 1:16). This high degree of trust, introspection, self-knowledge, and self-confidence was quite unusual at that time. In fact, we will hardly see anything comparable till Augustine's Confessions, written around A.D. 400, where the author describes the inner life with a similar interest and precision.”