Al Owski’s Reviews > The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe > Status Update

“It is no longer about being correct. It is about being connected.”

“We must point out these almost hidden but fully corporate under-standings in Paul, since most Western dualistic minds have been preconditioned to read his letters in a purely anthropocentric and individualistic way. This is neither good nor new. It is the same old story line of secular society with some religious frosting on top.”

“Once I know that all suffering is both our suffering and God's suffering, I can better endure and trust the desolations and disappointments that come my way. I can live with fewer comforts and conveniences when I see my part in global warming.”

“"He is your life you too will be revealed in all your glory with him" (Colossians 3:4). Unless and until we can enjoy this, so much of what passes for Christianity will amount to little more than well-disguised narcissism and self-referential politics. We see this…playing out in the de facto values of people who strongly identify as Christian. Often they are more racist, classist, and sexist than non-Christians.”

“Unless we find the communal meaning and significance of the suffering of all life and ecosystems on our planet, we will continue to retreat into our individual, small worlds in our quest for personal safety and sanity. Privatized salvation never accumulates into corporate change because it attracts and legitimates individualists to begin with. Think about that.”

“For five hundred years, Christian teachers defined and redefined salvation almost entirely in individualistic terms, while well-disguised social evils—greed, pride, ambition, deceit, gluttony—moved to the highest levels of power and influence, even in our churches.”

“five-hundred-year battle for the private soul of the individual, thus leaving us with almost no care for the earth, society, the outsider, or the full Body of Christ. This is surely one reason why Christianity found itself incapable of critiquing social calamities like Nazism, slavery, and Western consumerism.”

“I suspect that Western individualism has done more than any other single factor to anesthetize and even euthanize the power of the Gospel. Salvation, heaven, hell, worthiness, grace, and eternal life all came to be read through the lens of the separate ego, crowding God's transformative power out of history and society.”

“Until we start reading the Jesus story through the collective notion that the Christ offers us, I honestly think we miss much of the core message, and read it all in terms of individual salvation, and individual reward and punishment. Society will remain untouched.”

“If we do not recognize that we ourselves are the problem, we will continue to make God the scapegoat—which is exactly what we did by the killing of the God-Man on the cross. The crucifixion of Jesus—whom we see as the Son of God was a devastating prophecy that humans would sooner kill God than change themselves.”