One Life, One Death, One Suffering
The Universal Christ is trying to communicate at the deepest intuitive level that
there is only One Life, One Death, and One Suffering on this earth. We are all
invited to ride the one wave, which is the only wave there is. Call it Reality, if
you wish. But we are all in this together.
Consider how a “one-lump” awareness of reality upends so many of our
current religious obsessions. Our arguments about private worthiness; reward
and punishment; gender, race, and class distinctions; private possessions, all the
things that make us argue and compete, largely become a waste of time and an
illusion. All these lived arguments depend on some type of weighing,
measuring, counting, listing, labeling, and comparing. The Gospel, by contrast,
is about learning to live and die in and with God—all our warts included and
forgiven by an Infinite Love. The true Gospel democratizes the world.
We are all saved in spite of our mistakes and in spite of ourselves.
We are all caught up in the cosmic sweep of Divine grace and mercy.
And we all must learn to trust the Psalmist’s prayer: “Not to us, not to us, O
Lord, but to your name be the glory” (Psalm 115:1).
The freeing, good news of the Gospel is that God is saving and redeeming the
Whole first and foremost, and we are all caught up in this Cosmic Sweep of
Divine Love. The parts—you and me and everybody else—are the blessed
beneficiaries, the desperate hangers-on, the partly willing participants in the
Whole. Paul wrote that our only task is to trust this reality “until God is all in
all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). What a different idea of faith! “When Christ is
revealed,” Paul writes to the Colossians, “and he is your life—you too will be
revealed in all your glory with him” (3:4). Unless and until we can enjoy this, so
much of what passes for Christianity will amount to little more than well-
disguised narcissism and self-referential politics. We see this phenomenon
playing out in the de facto values of people who strongly identify as Christian.
Often they are more racist, classist, and sexist than non-Christians. “Others can
carry the burden and the pain of injustice, but not my group,” they seem to say.
Once I know that all suffering is both our suffering and God’s suffering, I can
better endure and trust the desolations and disappointments that come my way.
I can live with fewer comforts and conveniences when I see my part in global