The Christ in Evolution

Ilia Delio, a Franciscan sister and scientist, describes the positive foundation we have in the Universal Christ:

Franciscan theology on the whole . . . emphasized the incarnation as the love of God made visible in the world.  Bonaventure did not consider the incarnation foremost as a remedy for sin {as has been the focus for some Christians} but the primacy of love and the completion of creation.  He recapitulated an idea present in the Greek fathers of the church, namely, Christ is the redeeming and fulfilling center of the universe.  The Christ does not save us from creation; rather, Christ is the reason for creation. . . . Christ is first in God’s intention to love; love is the reason for creation. [1]

Lacking an understanding of the Good News of "The Christ", few have the vision to perceive any coherence between the Source {God} and the Goal {Universal Christ Consciousness}. The Christian message has had less and less significance for thinking people, for scientists, philosophers, social workers, and those trying to find a purpose for the universe.  Unfortunately much of Christianity became merely another moralistic religion.   Its main focus was to “win” over other religions and countries.  This practice, overwhelmingly aligned Christianity with a history of “empire building” not only in Europe but eventually in the Americas through colonization.  This became the acceptable norm rather than representing the whole of creation and cherishing humanity as one in the same. (Romans 8:18-21).  [18] I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. [19] For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. [20] For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope [21] that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

Without the cosmic notion of The Christ, Christians can’t understand that God is inherent in life itself, that God is the life force of everything who grows things from the inside.  Hence a tree and it's fruit within the seed or all of humanity both male and female within a single seed.  The Indwelling Spirit was our way of saying that God creates things that create themselves from within! “And the two shall become one to conceive another” In humans and animals this is experienced as sexuality, in plants as photosynthesis. Elements participate in the creative process through electromagnetic fields, fusion, and bonding.  Even celestial bodies experience death and birth. The creative process encompasses growth and growth will always be folks, death is simply a trans-formative stage, a womb of new birth if you will.

Not surprisingly, many Christians ended up tragically focused only on fighting evolution, or singled out social justice issues as the primary focus around human-rights struggles—slavery, women’s suffrage, desegregation, racism, classism, homophobia, policies regarding refugees and immigrants, mass incarceration, and climate change. We had no evolutionary notion of The Christ who is forever “groaning in one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22).   [22] We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Yet we should have been on the front line of all of these issues, so our bold proclamation of love and justice could have pulled humanity forward.

The Christian religion was originally intended to grease the wheels of human consciousness to lead us into a way of living out unconditional love, nonviolence, earth care, and justice rather than believing in a system of sayings, rules and rituals.   Mature spirituality serves as a conveyor belt for the evolution of human consciousness. Immature religion stalls us at low levels of well-disguised egocentricity by fooling us into thinking we are more moral or holy than others by what we say rather than what we do.

“Indeed God is not far from any one of us.  For ‘In God we live and move and have our very being’” (Acts 17:27-28).  If this is true, then it has to be true everywhere and all the time.   Small truth is not big enough to save a very large universe folks.

 References:                                                                               

[1] Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution (Orbis Books: 2008), 6.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 217-219.