Synopsis
"I contend 2012 signals a 'New Age of Vision,' and not the destruction that some predict and expect," said Woods, a former psychologist turned software engineer, who believes that many religious institutions may actually be obstructing the true message of Jesus Christ. "The Christ message contains the keys to heaven, but we have not been able to reach an understanding of His message. We have been misdirected by our religious institutions, which have been mainly interested in ecclesiastical power. The words of Jesus Christ have been buried under 2,000 years of obfuscation. We now need to dig out the truth, and arrive at a new understanding of what His message means for us today."
Woods' central belief is that it's time for a re-interpretation of Christ's message in the context of the challenges our world faces today.
"It is my contention that true Christianity has yet to appear," said Woods, author of A New Age of Vision (anewageofvision.com). "We need to seek a deeper understanding of the Christ message, and I believe the best way to accomplish this is to examine, among other sources, all the Christian gospels, including those gospels that were excluded from the New Testament Canon by the men who created our Christian theology. On one hand we refer to the Bible as the word of God, but we forget the lessons of our own theologians when we ignore the fact that it is God's word as written by men. And these men weren't always serving only Christ. In some cases, they were serving the feudal lords of their times. That's why we need to reinterpret Christ's message in order to purge the window dressing placed on it by ages of religious leaders."
Woods advocates a back to basics approach to Christ's message.
"The words of Jesus Christ, if understood, would teach us really how to love one another," he said. "His message, if understood, would allow us to achieve universal brotherhood and universal peace. We could achieve nothing less than heaven on Earth and beyond. What more could we possibly ask for or want? What we need is a true understanding of the Christ message of love."
He also believes that the current religious leadership has artificially set religious dogma up as an antithesis of science. For people to truly understand Christ, Woods said that wall needs to be torn down.
"We need to expose the man-created construct that sets Christianity against science," he said. "Understanding the syncretism of science and religion is possible. The issue of religion versus science need not be an issue at all, and Christ gave us the solution to this artificial conflict two millennia ago but it has, as of yet, fallen on ears that do not hear."
AWARDS: Editor's Choice
About the Author
As a baby boomer, J. Craig Woods was a young man during the turbulent 1960's, and this experience was instrumental in shaping his development as an individual. In the early 1970s, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and lived in Japan for several years. After his discharge from the Navy, he attended the University of California on the GI Bill where he majored in psychology and philosophy. He worked within the mental health field for a number of years, until healthcare funding cuts forced him to make a career change, moving from the mental health of the individual to the technological health of computers. He has worked for some of the largest US corporations as a UNIX system engineer for the last twenty years. In this capacity, he has set up servers that function as the computers that run on the World Wide Web. He is now concerned only with the accomplishment of achieving peace and love in this life and the afterlife.
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