What is Reddit's opinion of The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

You might want to take a look at this book, The Universal Christ, which helps ground Christianity in God's material world when you yourself might start to get unmoored.

There are what can look like mixed messages in the gospels about the nature of flesh. (Paul struggles with the flesh, but also says all things are lawful for him although not all are beneficial for him, just like Jesus says as long as the spirit is pure the body is pure -- why wash the outside of the cup when the one who made the inside also made the outside?)

Friar Rohr helps bring together the Bible's teachings in a way that will hopefully help you see God in matter rather than feel totally alienated from your body and from other people.

I LOVE YOU u/Thick_Community_1075! I mean it.

First going to echo u/IndustryBrief1745's comments about the crisis line. Especially if you're in a place where you can't access therapy/psychiatry - use it.

Second - I wish I could provide clean and easy answers to everything that you're going through. It may seem like nothing, but I see your suffering, I see your pain, I see you and would give anything to have you feel that love of being seen. Fear is never an easy entity to dance with, and the voices we internalize through moralized religious structures amplify its voice a million times over. I know it doesn't help to hear they're false, that they're not from God or of Love. But they are. Honestly, where you're at right now, I'd encourage to you distance yourself from the concepts of sin as you know them as much as you're able to. And if you're able, look for whole, life-giving understandings of the concept that are of Love. Sin is an old archery term, which means to "miss the mark", it's not a binary hit or miss, it's gradations of closeness to the wholeness of love, and we're all always a mix of closer and not. And God LOVES THAT, because God loves us. Salvation means "well-being" and Love is willing the good of the other - any image of God that goes against your greatest peace, wellbeing, and wholeness simply isn't God/Love. And unfortunately we have a lot of those running around, propogated, and defended today. And you're not alone in believing in God in God's wholeness like this - no matter how many nay-sayers you may encounter, you're backed by so many here, so many around the world, and hundreds if not thousands of mystics and holy people through the ages that simply could not let God be a small as humans tend to try to make God.

Third, Love honestly is everywhere, if the healthiest decision for you at this point in time is to step away from parts or portions of religion for the sake of healing (or hell, all of it), if services/interactions with other Christians/religious individuals is causing you this much strife and turmoil to the point of it threatening your life, step away. Step away and into spaces where you feel whole and loved. Step away and into relationships that allow you to access Love's true nature, it's in our small human interactions that we begin to know Love's true face. Step into the things that allow you to actually encounter God, and build a loving relationship. Step into relationships that hold up a mirror and allow you to see your wholeness and goodness (your essence! It's all over Genesis, "and God saw it was good," not "did good," not "was moral," simply WAS (being) good). Step into things where you find flow, joy, peace - that is God and God in you. God never leaves you, God lives in the seat of your soul, God chose that place! Because being separate from you exactly as you are (not as you do) simply wasn't of God's design or bearable to God. The only thing you need to do in this moment, is ask - ask for what you need, ask for peace, for comfort, for grounding, for love...they will come - and take the risk to open yourself to the answer of a God that doesn't know how to be anything but ridiculously lavious and generous.

Sending you all the love in the world. You are whole, you are a gift as you are,

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________I know it may seem a little crazy to throw out a book recommendation in a time like this, but I'll do so in the hope that if you've got the bandwidth for it might help break open this punitive image of sin and God. It's called The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr. Honestly I'd recommend anything by this man, he's got a really mystic and FULL understanding of God. I remeber listening to one of his books and it just felt like my heart finally hear out loud what it had always known my God and self to be, and they've been really helpful in deconstructing the hyper-moralistic trappings of church that I'd internalized over the years that simply are not of Love.

"Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned, even, and especially, when things go "wrong." Love allows and accomodates everything in human experience both the good and the bad and nothing else [meaning Love/God] can really do this. Love flows unstoppably downward, around every obstacle like water. Love and water seek not the higher place, but always the lower, that's why forgiveness is always the most powerful display of love in action. When we forgive we acknowledge that there is something to forgive; a mistake, an error, but instead of reverting to survival mode, we release the offending party from any need for punishment or recrimination. In doing so we bear witness to the ever-risen and always-loving Christ ... Unforgiveness lives in a repetitive past, which it cannot let go of but forgiveness [Love] is a largeness of soul....when you've been included in the spaciousness of divine Love, there is just no room for human punishment, rash judgement, or calls for retribution...We certainly see none of this small-mindedness in the risen Christ after his rejection betrayal and cruel death. We don't even see it in his inner circle, or in the whole New Testament" (Universal Christ, Chapter 5).

*note: one of my favorite definitions of forgiveness comes from Eckart Tolle, he redefines it as acceptance. It's pure one-ness with what is not a conditional "I'll let you off the hook if x,y,z" and it's one of the primary features of God.

Other great things for breaking down the smallness of a punitive God-image: The Deconstructionist Podcast, Falling Upward(this one is good and helps explalin why a lot of relgion/Christianity understands God the way it does), The Power of Now. All but the last are from a religious background (albeit a very expansive one), I'm sorry I wish I had more outside resources.