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Informationen zum Autor Joseph Girzone Klappentext There are countless paths to follow when seeking spiritual guidance! but thousands of years of religion and theology cannot replace the premier example that Jesus himself set. In A Portrait of Jesus! bestselling writer Joseph Girzone recaptures the truth of Jesus that is presented in the Gospels and gives a compelling vision of the person Jesus' contemporaries must have known. In his most powerful work yet! Girzone seeks to personify Christ in the minds of readers by asking some simple questions: "What did people see in Jesus as he walked down the street? How did he approach others and what would these people take away from meeting him? What do his actions tell us about how we can live our lives today?" It is Girzone's empowering and loving understanding of the heart of Christianity that will make A Portrait of Jesus a groundbreaking classic in the tradition of his bestselling books! Joshua and Never Alone. FOREWORD I loved my work as a priest. Whether in parishes or in schools or in community involvement, I enjoyed working not only with my own people but with people and clergy of other religions. I thoroughly enjoyed the spirit of camaraderie generated among us. We worked well together. Some clergy, sadly, kept themselves aloof and chose not to associate with people of other religions, feeling their religion was the true religion and that it would be sinful to give the appearance of endorsing another religion. I suppose that was where we as Catholics were at not very long ago, and where some of us still are. But for those of us who did break out of that crusty shell, we learned to appreciate one another and see how each of us was loved by God and expressed a facet of Jesus the others had overlooked. We were all concerned about our work, about our people, about the exciting and discouraging happenings in our communities. It took a long time, however, for me to realize that there was something missing in our approach to religion, and this made me feel uneasy. We were sensitive to the customs and traditions of each of our churches. We were aware and concerned about community problems. We, as clergy, were conscientious about protecting our people's faith and their allegiance to their church and synagogue, which we should be. But there was something that did not ring true. One day it struck me that while we were all church- or synagogue-oriented, we did not seem to be sensitive to what might be God's concerns. After all, God is our religion. Churches and synagogues are merely the vehicles of God's message. Their teaching of widely divergent messages impressed me as fragmenting the unity of God's mind, and not reflecting an intelligent, caring God to a world reaching out for comfort and healing. I began to realize it didn't make sense that we were wandering in so many different directions when God's mind is one. Catholics were in love with Church and obsessed with Church laws and customs, and insensitive to those who could not maintain the Church's ideals. Protestants were obsessed with the Bible and their conflicting interpretations of Scripture as well as their own customs and taboos, and were equally insensitive to sinners. Jews were obsessed with keeping their people loyal to their bloodlines, and careful not to let them become too close to Christians. Belief in God often seemed secondary, and sensitivity to God's concerns to be almost nowhere in focus. A synagogue member could be an agnostic or an atheist. That was acceptable, but to become a Christian was unthinkable and meant excommunication, and not very long ago, hanging a crepe on the front door of the person's home was not a rarity. It struck me that God could not be happy with that kind of mentality. These obsessions kept us all, while being ceremoniously friendly, at a safe distance from one another, carefully preserving the invisible walls that divided us, and paying on...
