The Universal Christ

by Richard Rohr

  In contrast to these three is the incarnational worldview, in which matter and Spirit are understood to have never been separate. Matter and spirit reveal and manifest each other. This view relies more on awakening than joining, more on seeing than obeying, more on growth in consciousness and love than on clergy, experts, morality, scriptures, or rituals. The code word I am using in this entire book for this worldview is simply “Christ.” Those who fight this worldview the most tend to be adherents of the other three, but for three different reasons.

  In Christian history, we see the incarnational worldview most strongly in the early Eastern Fathers, Celtic spirituality, many mystics who combined prayer with intense social involvement, Franciscanism in general, many nature mystics, and contemporary eco-spirituality. In general, the materialistic worldview is held in the technocratic world and areas its adherents colonize; the spiritual worldview is held by the whole spectrum of heady and esoteric people; and the priestly worldview is almost all of organized religion.

  Each of the four worldviews holds a piece of the cosmic puzzle of reality, and even the incarnational worldview can be understood in glib and naïve ways, and thus also be “wrong.” I have seen this among many progressive Catholics, liberal mainline Protestants, and New Agers. When one too quickly and smartly says, “All things are sacred” or “God is everywhere,” that doesn’t necessarily mean one has really longed and made space for this awareness, nor really integrated such an amazing realization. This is why we must balance Christ Consciousness with the embodied Jesus. Incarnation itself cannot become another mental belief system, glibly accepted because it is easy and trendy. Only sincere and longtime seekers experience the deep satisfaction of an incarnational worldview. It does not just fall into your lap. You have to know its deep significance and seek Spirit in and through matter. You really must learn to love matter in all its manifestations over time, I think.

  The incarnational worldview grounds Christian holiness in objective and ontological reality instead of just moral behavior. This is its big payoff. Yet, this is the important leap that most have not yet made. Those who have can feel as holy in a hospital bed or a tavern as in a chapel. They can see Christ in the disfigured and broken as much as in the so-called perfect or attractive. They can love and forgive themselves and all imperfect things, because all carry the Imago Dei equally, even if not perfectly. Incarnational Christ Consciousness will normally move toward direct social, practical, and immediate implications. It is never an abstraction or a theory. It is not a mere pleasing ideology. If it is truly incarnational Christianity, then it is always “hands-on” religion and not solely esotericism, belief systems, or priestly mediation.

  As I have studied the two-thousand-year history of Christianity, I’ve noticed how most of our historic fights and divisions were about power or semantics: Who holds the symbols or has the right to present the symbols? Who is using the right words? Who is following the often arbitrary church protocols based on Scriptures? How does one do the rituals properly? and other nonessentials. (This will always happen when you do not know the essentials.) And all of this substituting for—yet surely longing for—in-depth experience of God or the Infinite.

  The essential Gospel of God’s loving union with all of creation from the beginning was seldom believed—and usually actively denied or ignored by most clergy. One wonders, and I do not mean this cynically, if it had a lot to do with job security. We clergy were the needed mediators and salesmen in the other three worldviews, but not so much in the incarnational view. Thus most clergy do not see nature as the “First Bible” but emphasize the much later version, written in the last nanosecond of geological time and then called the only word of God. Yet those very Scriptures say that the “Word” was “from the beginning” (John 1:1) and that Word was always identified with “Christ”—which in time “became flesh and lived among us” (1:14). St. Bonaventure believed that every creature is a word of God, and this was the first book of “the Bible.”*

  If my underlying thesis in this book is true and Christ is a word for the Big Story Line of history, then the incarnational worldview held maturely is precisely the Good News!

  You do not need to name this universal manifestation “Christ,” however, to fully live inside of it and enjoy its immense fruits.

  * Bonaventure, Breviloquium 2, 5.1, 2, ed. Dominic V. Monti, O.F.M. Collected Works of St. Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2005), 72–73.

  APPENDIX II

  The Pattern of Spiritual Transformation

  Even inside an incarnational worldview, we grow by passing beyond some perfect order, through a usually painful and seemingly unnecessary disorder, to an enlightened reorder or “resurrection.” This is the “pattern that connects” and solidifies our relationship with everything around us.

  The trajectory of transformation and growth, as I see the great religious and philosophical traditions charting it, uses many metaphors for this pattern. We could point to the classic “Hero’s Journey” charted by Joseph Campbell; the Four Seasons or Four Directions of most Native religions; the epic accounts of exodus, exile, and Promised Land of the Jewish people, followed by the cross, death, and resurrection narrative of Christianity. Here, I offer a distillation that might help you see all of these trajectories in a common and very simple—almost too simple—way. Each of these “myths,” and each in its own way, is saying that growth happens in this full sequence. To grow toward love, union, salvation, or enlightenment (I use the words almost interchangeably), we must be moved from Order to Disorder and then ultimately to Reorder.

  ORDER: At this first stage, if we are granted it (and not all are), we feel innocent and safe. Everything is basically good, it all means something, and we feel a part of what looks normal and deserved. It is our “first naïveté”; it explains everything, and thus feels like it is straight from God, solid, and forever. Those who try to stay in this first satisfying explanation of how things are and should be will tend to refuse and avoid any confusion, conflict, inconsistencies, suffering, or darkness. They do not like disorder in any form. Even many Christians do not like anything that looks like “carrying the cross.” (This is the huge price we have paid for just thanking Jesus for what he did on the cross, instead of actually imitating him.) Disorder or change is always to be avoided, the ego believes, so let’s just hunker down and pretend that my status quo is entirely good, should be good for everybody, and is always “true” and even the only truth. But permanent residence in this stage tends to create either willingly naïve people or control freaks, and very often a combination of both. I have found it invariably operates from a worldview of scarcity and hardly ever from abundance.

  DISORDER: Eventually your ideally ordered universe—your “private salvation project,” as Thomas Merton called it—must and will disappoint you, if you are honest. As Leonard Cohen puts it, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Your wife dies, your father loses his job, you were rejected on the playground as a child, you find out you are needy and sexual, you fail an exam for a coveted certification, or you finally realize that many people are excluded from your own well-deserved “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This is the disorder stage, or what we call from the Adam and Eve story the “fall.” It is necessary in some form if any real growth is to occur; but some of us find this stage so uncomfortable we try to flee back to our first created order—even if it is killing us. Others today seem to have given up and decided that “there is no universal order,” or at least no order we will submit to. That’s the postmodern stance, which distrusts all grand narratives, ideologies, and globalism, including often any notions of reason, a common human nature, social progress, universal human norms, absolute truth, and objective reality. Much of the chaos that reigns in the American culture and government these days is the direct result of such a “post-truth society.” Permanent residence in this stag
e tends to make people rather negative and cynical, usually angry, and quite opinionated and dogmatic about one form of political correctness or another, as they search for some solid ground. Some accuse religious people of being overly dogmatic, yet this stymied position worships disorder itself as though it were a dogma: “I reject all universal explanations except one—there are no universal explanations!” it seems to be saying. Such universal cynicism and skepticism become their universal explanation, their operative religion, and also their greatest vulnerability.

  REORDER: Every religion, each in its own way, is talking about getting you to this reorder stage. Various systems would call it “enlightenment,” “exodus,” “nirvana,” “heaven,” “salvation,” “springtime,” or even “resurrection.” It is the life on the other side of death, the victory on the other side of failure, the joy on the other side of the pains of childbirth. It is an insistence on going through—not under, over, or around. There is no nonstop flight to reorder. To arrive there, we must endure, learn from, and include the disorder stage, transcending the first naïve order—but also still including it! It amounts to the best of the conservative and the best of the liberal positions. They hold on to what was good about the first order but also offer it very needed correctives. People who have reached this stage, like the Jewish prophets, might be called “radical traditionalists.” Loving their truth and their group enough to critique it. Critiquing it enough to maintain their own integrity and intelligence. These wise ones have stopped overreacting but also overdefending. They are usually a minority of humans.

  Based on years of spiritual direction, with people both in the United States and in other countries, I have observed that the implications of this journey are different for those who identify as either conservative or liberal. Conservatives must let go of their illusion that they can order and control the world through religion, money, war, or politics. This is often their real security system; their intense religious language often shows itself to be a pretense and a cover for a very conservative politics. True release of control to God will show itself as compassion and generosity, and less boundary keeping.

  Liberals, however, must surrender their belief in permanent disorder, and their horror of all leadership, eldering, or authority, and find what was good, healthy, and deeply true about a foundational order. This will normally be experienced as a move toward humility and real community. They must stop reacting against all authority and tradition, and recognize these are necessary for continuity in a culture along with basic mental health—which allows them to belong to something besides themselves.

  To move toward greater wholeness, both groups, each in a different way, must let go of their false innocence. Both liberals and conservatives are seeking separateness and superiority, just in different ways. In my language, they both must somehow be “wounded” before they give up these foundational illusions. The Recovery movement calls this Step 1, the admission of powerlessness.

  This journey from order to disorder to reorder must happen for all of us; it is not something just to be admired in Abraham, Moses, Job, or Jesus. Our role is to listen and allow, and at least slightly cooperate with this almost natural progression. We all come to wisdom at the major price of both our innocence and our control. Which means that few go there willingly. Disorder must normally be thrust upon us. Why would anyone choose it? I wouldn’t.

  I want to repeat that there is no nonstop flight from order to reorder, or from disorder to reorder, unless you dip back into what was good and helpful but also limited about most initial presentations of “order” and even the tragedies of “disorder” or wounding (otherwise you spend too much of your life rebelling, reacting, and suffocating). I’m not sure why God created the world that way, but I have to trust the universal myths and stories. Between beginning and end, the Great Stories inevitably reveal a conflict, a contradiction, a confusion, a fly in the ointment of our self-created paradise. This sets the drama in motion and gives it momentum and humility. Everybody, of course, initially shoots for “happiness,” but most books I have ever read seem to be some version of how suffering refined, taught, and formed people.

  Maintaining our initial order is not of itself happiness. We must expect and wait for a “second naïveté,” which is given more than it is created or engineered by us. Happiness is the spiritual outcome and result of full growth and maturity, and this is why I am calling it “reorder.” You are taken to happiness—you cannot find your way there by willpower or cleverness. Yet we all try! We seem insistent on not recognizing this universal pattern of growth and change. Trees grow strong by reason of winds and storms. Boats were not meant to live in permanent dry dock or harbor. Baby animals must be educated by their mothers in the hard ways of survival, or they almost always die young. It seems that each of us has to learn on our own, with much kicking and screaming, what is well hidden but also in plain sight.

  Bibliography

  Alfeyev, Hilarion. Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009.

  Alison, James. Knowing Jesus. London: SPCK, 2012.

  Allies, Mary H., trans. St. John Damascene on Holy Images. London: Burns and Oates, 1898.

  Athanasius. On the Incarnation. Translated by Olivier Clément. The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary. New York: New City Press, 2015.

  Augustine. The Retractions. Translated by Sister M. Inez Bogan, R.S.M. The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 60. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1968.

  Bailie, Gil. Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. New York: Crossroad, 1995.

  Balswick, Jack O., Pamela Ebstyne King, and Kevin S. Reimer. The Reciprocating Self: Human Development in Theological Perspective. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016.

  Barfield, Owen. Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988.

  Barnhart, Bruno. The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth of Sapiential Christianity. New York: Continuum, 2007.

  ———. Second Simplicity: The Inner Shape of Christianity. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999.

  Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. New York: HarperOne, 2012.

  Benedict XVI. The Faith. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2013.

  Berry, Thomas. The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009.

  ———. The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988.

  Berry, Wendell. “The Wild Geese.” Collected Poems, 1957–1982. Berkeley, CA: North Point, 1984.

  Berthold, George C., ed. Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985.

  Boff, Leonardo. Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology for Our Time. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978.

  Bonaventure. Breviloquium 2, 5.1, 2. Edited by Dominic V. Monti. Collected Works of St. Bonaventure. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2005.

  Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Christ the Center. Translated by Edwin H. Robertson. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.

  Bourgeault, Cynthia. The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity. Boston: Shambhala, 2013.

  ———. The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. Boston: Shambhala, 2010.

  ———. The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—a New Perspective on Christ and His Message. Boston: Shambhala, 2008.

  Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day. New York: Anchor, 2002.

  Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. New York: C.S. Francis, 1857.

  Bruteau, Beatrice. Evolution Toward Divinity: Teilhard de Chardin and the Hindu traditions. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974.

  ———. God’s Ecstas
y: The Creation of a Self-Creating World. New York: Crossroad, 1997.

  ———. Radical Optimism: Practical Spirituality in an Uncertain World. New York: Crossroad, 1996.

  Buhlmann, Walbert. The Coming of the Third Church: An Analysis of the Present and Future of the Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977.

  Burnfield, David. Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

  Cannato, Judy. Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other Wonders of the Universe. Ave Maria Press: Sorin, 2006.

  Carroll, John E. and Keith Warner, eds. Ecology and Religion: Scientists Speak. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1998.

  Chesnut, Robert A. Meeting Jesus the Christ Again: A Conservative Progressive Faith. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017.

  Chryssavgis, John and Bruce V. Foltz, eds. Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.