"Part 5: Read Carl Jeffrey Wright’s In Search of Heroes Interview and Become Inspired" by Ralph Zuranski
Click Here to visit Jeff Wright's Heroes Page
check out the links below to the Guardian Line Comics and Urban Ministries
www.TheGuardianLine.com
www.urbanministries.com
Ralph Zuranski: What specific philosophy or philosophies guide your life and your decisions?
Jeff Wright: I’m a Christian. I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ and the philosophy or philosophies that guide my life are the principles of Biblical worldview. Understanding that life is about abiding in the life of Christ and abiding in His Word and living in line with a past, a present and a future that points to a world that God wants to see on earth as it is in heaven.
Ralph Zuranski: What is your perspective on goodness, ethics and moral behavior?
Jeff Wright: Again my perspective is one of a Biblical worldview. I believe that God has laid out in His Word, the Bible, the complete perspective that anyone should have on goodness, ethics and moral behavior. That is what is right and what is wrong. It’s all there in the 613 commandments.
Jeff Wright: There is the model of Jesus Christ who summed it up so well in the greatest commandment, “To love God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jeff Wright: That’s the summation of the law. But the specifics of the law also count and are important. And I believe, like the ultra-orthodox Jews, we should be seeking as much as possible to adhere to those things, those principles, those precepts that are laid out in God’s Word, the Bible. And I believe that with all my heart. And I believe that it’s possible to do it though the help of God.
Jeff Wright: Are we going to always be there? Of course not. But those should be the principles and the guidelines that we strive to adhere to.
Ralph Zuranski: What place does the power of prayer have in your life?
Jeff Wright: Prayer is very important in my life. I am a person of prayer. I am of the belief that praying without ceasing and trying to make certain that with as much of your day as you can keep in conscious inner dialog with God, the more our lives will be led by the Spirit.
Jeff Wright: I was very fortunate to grow up in a Christian home so some of my earliest memories are praying at the bedside of my parents. I had six brothers and the seven of us would pray at night with our parents. They taught us prayers and they taught us to pray and I have a tremendous legacy of prayer in my family that has helped me to this day.
Jeff Wright: Not just showing me by example and through experience that prayer works, and of course it does, but also just the benefit of other people praying for me. So I pray and I encourage my children to pray and I depend on the prayers of my family members and friends and I don’t make a single key decision without some directed time in prayer.
Ralph Zuranski: Wasn’t your mother a real prayer warrior? Didn’t she lose an arm and a leg by being run over by a train and almost died and bled to death when she was younger?
Jeff Wright: Yes, that’s true. That is true. My mother is a tremendous prayer warrior. She’ll be 86 years old next month and it is true, she did lose an arm and a leg when she was eight years old and she lived. That happened in the South, in Northeast Arkansas where she grew up.
Jeff Wright: Of course, obviously a preacher’s daughter in a small community, there was a lot of prayer that brought her through that. But her life is in and of itself a testimony. She has gone on, obviously, to have seven children, all boys.
Jeff Wright: She raised us. She finished her master’s degree in Library Science when she was pregnant with my youngest brother and then went on and had another career, really. I mean, after a career as a mom with seven children she went on to a 20-year career as a librarian in the public library system and in the university libraries in Washington, DC, where we grew up. And she still remains very active in her church.
Jeff Wright: She is an active person and a volunteer in the mentoring world. She was one of the board members of the literacy program “Reading is Fundamental” for many years and just a tremendous example of the power of prayer. And, of course, she was a great mom.