Universal Hoax

This article is a fuller response to the multiple inquiries I’ve received, regarding a book entitled: The Universal Christ, by Richard Rohr. In case you don’t finish this article, let me state on the front end, I highly do not recommend reading it. For starters, although he would argue, Rohr’s understanding of Heaven, Hell, and divine judgment have all been condemned as heresy throughout Church history.

It isn’t a great surprise to me that his book is Amazon’s #1 book in Christology and Christian ethics. Rohr has had a big following for many years and the fuller reason why I’m devoting any time to address this book is because he is having a growing influence on millennial and Gen Z spiritual seekers. These are the youth, young adults, and families to whom I’ve been called to minister. There is no question he is bright and charming and is seen by the nones (those who have left the Church and are seeking non-institutional religion) as the ultimate compassionate religious guru. He is perceived by the likes of Oprah, Melinda Gates and U2’s Bono as one of the most enlightened spiritual leaders in the world. Candidly, his earliest writings appealed to me and I too was a fan, but he has not withstood the test of time. And there are more than a couple incidental problems with his The Universal Christ. Much of it is really a return to Gnosticism. The Gnostics emphasize personal spiritual knowledge over orthodox teachings, traditions, and ecclesiastical authority; their pride of knowledge moved them to place more emphasis and power on humanity and less dependence on God. I think more accurately stated, the push is to be self-sufficient and believing the ultimate power rests in one’s self.

Let me point to a few of the glowing challenges within this book. Rohr understands Jesus as limited and earthbound, but Christ, sheds Jesus and becomes unlimited and universal. In other words, Jesus and Christ are separate, or at least separable. Jesus isn’t enough, he’s insufficient and has to depart from the seen, so that Christ can become what Rohr calls the cosmic force. For Rohr, in the end, Christ is God and Jesus is just a manifestation of God in time. Rohr reduces Jesus to being just a part of the Universe. He believes too much time has been wasted on worshipping the messenger (Jesus), instead of just trying to follow him - After all Jesus never asked us to worship him, just to follow him. Furthermore, he declares there is no need to try and name the mystery of God, for God in fuller truth just becomes a subjective term for what one senses is good. And for that matter, you don’t need to put a label on goodness.

For Rohr, the idea of Jesus being the completeness of Revelation is utter nonsense. Jesus is not the disclosure of God, for revelation is everywhere, it’s throughout time and space. Putting it another way, Jesus is not God incarnate, rather God was incarnate from the Big Bang. God loves all things and so he becomes all things. Rohr dedicated the book to his dead black Labrador dog Venus, who he says was Christ to him.

The Passion, Death, and Resurrection is pretty much about Jesus being the captain of the team, showing us all how to die to our ego and become enlightened. He is selling the shedding of one’s false self, which encapsulated means one needs to change how you see all things, for this is the most important part of the journey. See what one see’s with their eyes, but become contemplative. As a part of this contemplation, see Jesus’ death, not as atonement, but a key to one’s enlightenment. Jesus as atonement for sin is lunacy to Rohr, God doesn’t need to be bought off, because he’s pissed off. It’s not a zero sum game! There are no losers, it’s all win-win, it’s not the Gospel until you believe this - there is no Hell. He states that Jesus’ death didn’t accomplish redemption, rather, Jesus created the way for us to be Jesus. We are all a part of the second coming.

Being straightforward, Rohr’s vision of God’s incarnation paints a picture of a very impersonal God. It’s not about how God enters our life, so we might be transformed. It’s much more in line with what the Gnostics proclaimed; what one needs most is to be enlightened so you can save yourself, passing from ignorance to understanding.

Rohr likes to extract from Scripture passages to fit his narrative. As an example, he sites a few Scripture passages revealing Paul’s use of the phrase: in Christ, how It appears 164 times in St. Paul’s Letters, and how Jesus’ name only appears 5 times to support separating Christ from Jesus. Rohr say’s this is code for Christ not being an individual (stop emphasizing Jesus he says), but open your eyes and see the inclusivity of Christ, for we are all now personally Christ. Let me draw to our attention, it is the same St. Paul who wrote in a more coherent sentence: We proclaim Christ crucified … Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. … It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom of God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:23-30). There are many Scripture references, in much more complete context, I could utilize to dispel his theory of in Christ.

And if one plays his logic out, there are serious ethical flaws with The Universal Christ. In Rohr’s theory of all are Christ, that makes both Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler Christ. By the way, the term Christ, means anointed one. Although one could argue that you and I may be a bit of both good and evil, this is saying that Jesus too had good and evil in him and that Jesus could be both merciful and merciless.

Rohr likes to point to John’s writing as being the Gospel with more potential for enlightenment. I don’t argue that John’s Gospel is different in many ways from the synoptic Gospels and holds deep truth, but let me add, Rohr, goes on to say, that the ultimate path to enlightenment has little to do with the Bible. But since he used John’s Gospel to make a point about the Resurrection, let me say, I find it impossible to reconcile The Word became flesh (John 1:14) with Rohr’s vision of Christ resurrecting from Jesus’ dead body and becoming a beam of light being scattered everywhere in the Universe.

Prayerfully, I hope to draw closer and closer to God and His love. I know that in conforming myself to Jesus I will become my better self. But wherever this personal relationship leads, I’m pretty confident enlightenment isn’t coming to believe that the Creator of all things brought you or I into existence so we could end up worshipping nature, or worse, ourselves. I’ve ministered in some pretty dark places. To teach those who are fighting to get out of darkness to believe all will be fine if you just believe you are Christ is not only false, it’s incredibly damaging to one’s soul.

Beyond the heresy, I find Rohr’s book to be denigrating to Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection. It is more than a bit offensive to not only minimize Jesus’ suffering, but to trivialize all the personal suffering in this world. To this point, this current time of trial during this pandemic won’t have any lasting meaning chasing a Universal Christ hoax. I truly hope this becomes a faith filled reflective time, where more and more of us seek the deeper truth of God’s revelation and more fully appreciate with a grateful heart who and what Jesus continues to mean to us. For it is in the Eucharist that God gives us his love and through the gift of this love we are empowered to love, if only we receive the grace that comes from it. It is the Eucharist that gives us the hope that one day we will be able to love God as He loves us, with the same truth, purity, and generosity. As St. John tells us, God is love (1John 4). The love John speaks of reaches its culmination in the sacrifice of the Cross. You and I fully experience that love at every Mass. The beam of light that is made manifest to us is in Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.