The Jesus Prescription for a Healthy Life [Paperback]

Leonard Sweet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1996

Leonard Sweet--with his profound insight and humor--examines how Jesus laughed, played with children, walked, enjoyed the good times, and poked fun at pious pretensions. By examining the life of Jesus, this prescription for health and well-being details the ways and habits through which Jesus lived a disciplined life and healthy existence during his ministry among us. The self-help advice is linked directly to stories about or by Jesus in the Gospels. You are sure to sharpen spiritually and hone your life physically while learning things about Jesus that you have never heard before.

"Sweet's off-the-wall prescription will afflict your assumptions and confront your consumption. It will change the way you look at Jesus--and it will change you." --Russell Chandler.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Jesus wasn't a stand-up comic, but his hearers would have laughed occasionally and smiled knowingly. The more scholars know about the times in which Jesus lived, the more they appreciated Jesus' taste for visual wit and teasing irony. Jesus loved to pun and poke fun. He also enjoyed poking holes in the spiritual balloons of the "super-righteous", especially the Pharisees, people whose serious spirituality Jesus deemed too humorless. In The Jesus Prescription For A Healthy Life, Leonard Sweet, with quirky insight and humor, examines how Jesus laughed, hung out with friends, played with children, walked, enjoyed good times at social gathers, ate, and poked fun at pious pretensions. Using as its hook the life of Jesus, Sweet details the ways (habits) in which Jesus lived a disciplined life and healthy existence, and illustrate the ancient truth: Being cheerful is like a medicine that keeps you healthy. It is slow death to be gloomy all the time. (Proverbs 17:22). The Jesus Prescription For A Healthy Life is a wonderful contribution to Christian studies and would serve well as the basis for many a lecture, sermon, and Sunday School lesson! -- Midwest Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Abingdon Press (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0687014913
• ISBN-13: 978-0687014910
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #978,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Len Sweet was born of a mixed marriage: his mother was a fiery Pilgrim Holiness-ordained preacher from the mountains of West Virginia and his quiet father a Free Methodist lay leader from the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. After a deconversion at 17, when Len set about less sowing wild oats than planting prairies, he became an atheist intellectual and scholar dedicated to exposing the nincompoopery and poppycockery, if not tomfoolery and skullduggery of all religions. After this seven-year period of liminality, Len came back to the faith of his ancestors, where he has been ever since, exploring the "insterstices" and "semiotics" of religion, culture and history. He uses two words to describe himself: semiotician and interstitial. In other words, he is obsessed with two questions: "Where have you been?" and "Where are you going?"

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jesus Prescription for a healthy Life...this Rocks, April 20, 2000

By 

Robbie - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Jesus Prescription for a Healthy Life (Paperback)

So many books about Jesus and Christianity focus on anything but Jesus and Christianity. This book gives positive insight into the types of changes that you can make to see REAL Results in your life. This book shows that Christianity is not about rules and do's and don'ts, but about the type of real life changes that can be brought about by internal changes. Salvation (which means deliverance) is not something that can be imputed to the believer by a set of rules, but by a change that can only occur by a transforming relationship with Jesus. Always wanted to be a Christian but didn't think you could keep your brain and your happiness...Read this book and do both.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Want to save your life?, July 28, 2007

By 

J. Golden - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Jesus Prescription for a Healthy Life (Paperback)

Jesus' commandments and example of behaviors that can transform your life from sickness to health, from death to life. Len Sweet has fun with this book, but what he says is deadly serious -- it could save your life (literally and figuratively, physically and spiritually)! Highly recommended.

1.0 out of 5 stars Great idea, poorly written, January 30, 2011

By 

jacobposey "Jake" (FL United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Jesus Prescription for a Healthy Life (Paperback)

Our Sunday School chose this book for a study and we were very disappointed. Toward the end of the book, we had dropped from 12 people to 4 people. The idea of the book was great, but it was not well executed. The main complaint from the group members is that it was not well written and very hard to follow. The author would make one argument and then present the counter argument in the middle of his evidence for his primary argument. For example, "Jesus says you should do X. Jesus did X here. Jesus did the opposite of X here." Other times, arguments for the author's point just did not make sense. For example, the author argued that the story of the prodigal son was supposed to be funny. In the end, we skimmed the chapters and spent about 5 minutes discussing them in order to just finish the book.

If you are going to use this book for your study group, I would strongly recommend having one person buy the book first and read through it.