The Universal Christ

 

The Universal Christ – by Richard Rohr

The Universal Christ is a book that will give comfort to a large number of people, yet at the same time, alienate many people who proclaim to be Christian. This is a book that strongly challenges perceptions of the Christian faith, yet it never contradicts the basics. It’s simply a different way of looking at the Bible, the words of Jesus Christ, and the early church. Author Richard Rohr (a Catholic Franciscan priest) makes a great case that much of what is taught in today’s Christian circles – both Catholic and Protestant – has been stained by a lot of recent history.  Much of what today’s mainstream Christianity teaches, Rohr asserts, is not at all what the early church taught nor believed.

The good news is that this book has…well…an awful lot of good news.  This book ascertains that the “Universal” Christ is just that. Universal. In other words, Christ is everywhere; in every one of us and in every thing.  The problem according to Rohr is that, as Christians, we don’t know where to look, or more importantly, how to look.  What we see in much of mainstream Christianity these days tends to be very narrow and polemic.  We’re taught that God hates sin so much that it is his nature to need to destroy his creation (mankind), yet by sacrificing his son on the cross, we can all rest assure that our sins have been paid for.  All Christians need to do, is accept and believe.  Well, maybe.  Truth be told, you’ll have a very difficult time getting Christians to be in complete agreement as to how all of this is supposed to work.  Most Protestants are told that by saying the “sinner’s prayer” it essentially gives you a “get out of jail free” card.  But you better make sure you say this prayer before your final breath, because if you don’t, it’s too late.  Many are taught by today’s churches is that once we’re dead, it’s too late to make amends with The Almighty.

This theology causes an awful lot more questions than it does answers, and I confess that I’m very skeptical of anyone who claims they’re a Christian and professes that they have a complete understanding of all this.  It doesn’t help when so many of these individuals are hyper Calvinists who seem to ignore Jesus’s teachings, and instead focus on wanting to punish their community and country for daring to ask questions and doing things like loving their neighbor and forgiving their enemies.  Just try to pronounce such sentiments at a Donald Trump rally where flags with the faces of Jesus are proudly flailed.

So Rohr invites us to take a slightly different look at the big picture and his conclusions make a whole lot more sense. Sometimes, though, his assertions can be quite radical for readers who have been brought up to believe certain things their entire Christian life. For example, one of his chapters is titled “Why did Jesus Die?”  His conclusion will make most of the faith do a double-take.  Yes, it was necessary for Jesus to die, but Rohr argues that it wasn’t really “for our sins” as we’ve been led to believe.  This will cause many to scream ‘HERETIC!’ before they can even finish the first line in the particular chapter.

I’m no theologian, so I can’t really argue with Rohr’s conclusions, but I will say that his explanations and theories make an awful lot more sense, and his solutions to an unbelieving world have a lot more validity than what today’s “leaders” such as Franklin Graham and his ilk propose.  Before one becomes too wary of the author’s conclusions, one should research his claims such as when he talks about the early church and how so many of our modern beliefs just weren’t around years ago.   Do we really need to grind our feet in the ground and take an unwavering stand that the Earth was created in six literal days when Christians never believed such a thing until 1800 years after Jesus’s earthly ministry?

I should also confess that I borrowed this book from the library, and almost wish I had bought my own copy because the chapters were so rich, that I wanted to mark up the entire book with a highlighter.  I also read this book rather quickly since the library, you know, only lets you keep books for so long. The time limitation was a bit of a hindrance since this book was so insightful, I really wish I could have read it at a much slower pace.  I think this would be a great book to do an adult bible study around.  It will challenge many people’s traditional ways of thinking, but in today’s religious and political climate, I would suggest that such a thing isn’t a bad idea at all.