I am a Christian who proselytizes. Often when I do I encounter someone who has Jesus-y language but whose beliefs are in the ream of yoga, UFOs, and New Age rather than Biblical Christianity.
Richard Rohr is one of those New-Age-y Jesus-talking teachers that actually can get airtime in the post-modern era. It’s mostly because all his Jesus is like the wine described in Proverbs, ‘it sparkles in the glass, and goes down smooth.’
Christ-Consciousness is defined by a popular article as
It’s also known as higher consciousness and plays into the idea that you actually have two types of consciousness. There’s the ordinary consciousness or awareness that’s part of our everyday lives—and a more profound type of awareness, or a higher consciousness, that has the power to put you in touch with God.
While the idea of higher consciousness dates back to the Bhagavad Vita, which was written about the time Christ walked on this earth, Christ consciousness is more a product of modern-day spirituality.
The idea is to realize the divine spark that one already has, no repentance required. It is the bait-and-switch sweetness of the fruit Eve bit into, ‘your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.’
The problem is that it sidesteps the real issue in our disunity, and unlikeness to God - our moral pollution of the heart. While humans are born enemies and rebels against God, he can never embrace humans in a genuine God-consciousness. The only way through to something genuine, divine, pure is by way of blood-atonement.
The price established at the genesis for rebellion against God’s law, then merely the solitary “do not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.” The penalty was the introduction of death into human biology that otherwise would be immoral.
The solution proposed then and there: the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. Until then, the only God-consciousness humanity would have was the devil’s counterfeit.
Higher Consciousness may be genuine in the following: perception of one’s emotions, one’s breathing, one’s body, one’s health. What it is not: consciousness of God, not while humans are at enmity toward God.
What is the real genuine edition?
I am not writing this article to contend that there is no such thing as perceiving the thoughts of God. I am not contending that God does not have a higher consciousness for those who indeed are reconciled to him by his son’s sacrifice, but the genuine and real thing is far greater than all that.
Peter in his second letter writes,
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption of the world because of sinful desire.
2 Peter 1:3-5
See in three parts, 1. he has granted by his divine power everything we could need by knowledge of him, 2. we become partakers of the divine nature and 3. we escape the corruption of the world (sin) in so doing.
This means not merely are we aware of a spark of divinity in us, we escape from all that is evil about being human and enjoy being inheritors of the nature of God in the process.
One cannot have knowledge of God’s thoughts without a desire to escape, much less an actualized escape, from indwelling sin. One cannot become a participant with the nature of God without the life of God accomplishing the whole thing.
How does this happen? By folly.
If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.
…
For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
1 Corinthians 3:18-19 & 1 Corinthians 1:21
Jesus Christ, son of God, fully human descendant of Adam, Abraham, and David, lived perfectly God’s Law, died as a criminal, was raised eternal. This simple history is God’s mechanism for the better-than-Christ-Consciousness life described at the beginning of the article. Christ places the sins of repentant people upon his cross when they trust that his redemption is for them. That’s it. God in turn, gives the man or woman in question a new life with God, in God’s nature.
Paul describes the sequence as follows:
You have been crucified with Christ.
You have been buried with baptism.
You have been raised with Christ.
You have been seated with Christ in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Your life is hidden with Christ in God.
You will be raised when Christ appears.
In turn, one lives as though one’s bodily life were a loan from heaven. One stewards the life of God within one’s body, avoiding what God would avoid, enjoying what God would enjoy.
In other words, a life with God.
If you want such a life, pray a prayer to the one who can give it. Pray till you get it.
S.D.G.