“God loves things by becoming them.”

– Richard Rohr

If you are longing to take-in, discuss, teach, contemplate or validate the truth that Christianity isn’t merely a belief system we adhere to in order to be “right” and not “wrong” when it comes to God, then get Richard Rohr’s latest book, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe.

Yes, the book is as expansive as its title, though, it is not a tome to plod through. It’s style is conversational, as if Rohr is sitting with you at the kitchen table, sharing wisdom that immediately resonates. With quotes, like the above, sprinkled throughout each chapter, always italicized. It’s his way, he explains, of encouraging us to sit with a TRUTH. So that we get our faith out of our head, and let it open the eyes of our heart.

Every time I lead a group conversation around faith and spirituality, people share stories of being made to feel less-than through church. I’m not surprised, I have those stories too. This book owns that reality. And it means a great deal to many when a Roman Catholic priest owns the ways in which organized religion has broken hearts. 

“It’s not the brand name [Christianity] that matters. It is that God’s heart be made available and active on this earth.”*

 We make God’s heart available whenever we are pulled out of ourselves, he writes. Primarily when we are experiencing tremendous love or tremendous suffering. Those are the times when our “common Christian sense” connects with what really matters.

Another plus is that you do not need a post-graduate degree in theology to read this. Rohr doesn’t need to prove his scholarly credentials with over-intellectualized prose (the bibliography backs up the scholarship). Rohr isn’t speaking at you, he wants to speak with you about those realities that you already know, deep down, to be true. It is perennial wisdom which will resonate in new ways at different points in one’s life. 

This is a book we need right now. We need to listen to people who use spiritual knowledge to build up, not puff-up, as St. Paul writes. We need voices to remind us that, “Faith, hope and love are the very nature of God…No one religion will ever encompass the depth of such faith. No ethnicity has a monopoly on such hope. No nationality can control or limit this Flow of such universal love.” Amen!

“Another Name for Everything” is the podcast companion to this book. Here is some more about it along with nine other recommendations for podcasts these days.

*Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ (New York: Convergent Books, 2019), 201.