by Larry DeBruyn
Colossians and the coming of the cosmic-christ.
Over three-and-one-half decades ago, John Lennon came out with the hit song Imagine. The lyrics project a utopian vision of the world in which, because there is no heaven or hell, no countries or religion, no possessions or greed, nothing to kill or die for, all the people will be one.[1] Internationally, Lennon’s song about the new world remains most popular. Increasingly, political, religious, and media ideologues are suggesting that for Lennon’s dream to become a reality, a one-world community must become committed to one-world spirituality.
As these societal movers and shakers might imagine, the new utopia will necessitate the dawning of a new spiritual consensus. Such messianism envisions christ to be mental, not personal, and that being the case, asks people to “shift” their consciousness to a one-world spirituality in order to build a one-world community. Utopia would, it is theorized, be based upon spiritual unity. Religion will no longer divide, but unite. There will be no heaven or hell, no countries or religion to die for. Terrorism will become obsolete. As John Lennon imagined, the world will be as one. But, under what guise might this spiritual shift be coming?
Its core belief appears to be this: In essence, the cosmos consists of a pantheist-christ spirit permeating everything.[2] Thus, everything, animate and inanimate, becomes “sacred.” This sacred christ is the one reality which comprises both the center and circumference of the universe. That’s why it’s called the cosmic christ. Christ is whatever constitutes time, matter, and space. Christ is Source. Christ is Moment. Christ is Energy. Christ is Thing. Christ is Presence. Christ is Being. Christ is Consciousness. Christ is Oneness. Christ is you. Christ is me. Christ is . . . In all of this, and unlike His portrayal in Holy Scripture, there is no sense in which Christ is personally before, above, without, or outside the world. (Oh, by the way . . . prepositions contain great theology!) This christ is co-existent and co-extensive with the universe. Because the New Age christ permeates nature, it is nature. If the universe didn’t exist, this christ wouldn’t exist. According to the math of the twin deceptions of New Ageism and the New Spirituality, christ minus the universe equals nothing. Arbitrarily, they take whatever is, assign divinity to it, and call it “christ.”
After stating a god-essence resides “in every creature, every flower, every stone,” Eckhart Tolle theorizes, “All that is, is holy.” Then he adds, “This is why Jesus, speaking entirely from his essence or Christ identity, says in the Gospel of Thomas: ‘Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.'”[3] Similarly, Matthew Fox wrote that God and Christ are in all things. As the “pattern that connects,” Fox sees his cosmic-christ as offering hope “by insisting on the interconnectivity of all things and on the power of the human mind and spirit to experience personally this common glue among all things.”[4] In his book Quantum Spirituality, emergent-evangelical Leonard Sweet advocates monism that nuances pantheism. Investing the cosmos with “christness,” he states, “The world of nature has an identity and purpose apart from human benefit. But we constitute together a cosmic body of Christ.”[5] Even Rick Warren’s reference to the New Century Version of Ephesians 4, and verse 6 (“God . . . is in everything”), plugs into the growing popularity of monistic spirituality.[6] So what might a Christian believer think about this redefinition of Christ? Click here to read the rest of this article.
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