This book is difficult to summarize, there are so many gems in it! So, I am simply going to share about my own journey and how this book impacted me. The Universal Christ has tentatively (holding loosely and not rigidly) helped me reconstruct my worldview.
For the past year, I have been teetering on agnosticism, I have become more and more Christian adjacent, I have struggled with doubt about who Jesus was, what he did, whether or not he physically rose from the dead. I have read apologetics, atheists and agnostics, I have read psychology, science, ethics and new age spirituality. I have been searching for… something.
I have been hardcore deconstructing all over again—I would count this as the third massive overhaul or spiritual shift in four decades of life. And I’m not saying that I’ve arrived in a place of certainty. If I’ve learned anything from deconstruction it is that no one can be certain of anything. At best we are hopeful, and we all pick and choose which worldview works best for us.
The incarnational worldview described in this book is extremely helpful to me. It doesn’t require me to place my faith in a human being called Jesus, so much as to see all humanity as the body and life of Christ. God incarnate is the universe. We only exist because there is life. There is life outside and inside of me. There is something conscious, something that breathes, and learns, and grows, something that suffers with us when we suffer, something that feels like it ultimately leads to love.
I’m not very good at atheism. I’ve dipped my toe in a few times. Something within me is left very dissatisfied with it. I’m happy for you if atheism works for you, it does not work for me. Not for my mental health, my life purpose, my hope for the future… I can admit that I’m agnostic. I cannot prove the existence of God, except by pointing to my own existence – how do we exist, how is there a universe if there isn’t some kind of life force? And I’m still Christian adjacent or “Christian-to-the-Christian” as Saint Paul might say. There are things about the Christian religion that I love and things about the Christian religion that I hate. I can only help reform this religion if I admit to being part of it. But I am also deeply intrigued by Buddhism. And what Richard Rohr said in this book about reconciling Buddhism and Christianity resonated deeply:
“In many ways Buddhism and Christianity shadow each other. They reveal each other’s blind spots. In general, Western Christians have not done contemplation very well, and Buddhism has not done action very well… In the West… we did not understand the human mind or heart very well, and they did not understand service or justice work very well. Thus we produced rigid capitalism and they often fell into ideological communism…”
And Richard’s summary of the incarnational worldview (and the 3 other worldviews: materialistic, spiritual, and priestly) opened my eyes to see that everyone (atheist, agnostic and religious) has a worldview and that I have already chosen one that works best for me:
“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.”
I am extremely grateful for this book. I hope that what Richard Rohr says about Jesus is also true. But regardless, I place a lot of hope and faith in what he has said about the Universal Christ and the Incarnational Worldview.
