The Purpose-Driven Life is a popular best-selling book by Rick Warren, the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. It was written in 2002 and is published by Zondervan. As of today, it was still at number five on Amazon’s list of bestselling books on ‘Christian Living.’ So there must still be a significant number of new copies being sold. In addition, the book has sold over 20 million copies and so has potentially influenced many Christians during the past 8 years . This is enough to warrant my brief Johnny-come-lately review.
The book is aggressively marketed and makes huge claims for itself. The back cover proclaims high-praise indeed:
- ‘Make sure you’re not missing the point of your life—read this book!’ (Billy Graham and Franklin Graham).
- ‘A Groundbreaking Manifesto on the Meaning of Life.’
- ‘A blueprint for Christian living in the 21st century.’
So much for the marketing and blurb. Moving on to the book itself, the name of the problem is ‘legion’ for there are many.
The first problem with the substance of the book occurs right at the very beginning, even before we reach the Contents page. The book simply takes a careless approach to Scripture, and constantly fails to distinguish between Scriptures addressed to God’s people and Scriptures that may be applied to everyone. The reader is addressed as ‘you’ throughout, and it is clear from the start that the ‘you’ is any reader, not just any Christian reader. Absolutely nothing is even hinted that the promises of God’s blessing and salvation do not apply to unbelievers.
The introduction is entitled ‘A Journey With a Purpose’ and the stated purpose of the book is fair enough, laudable even. The book sets out to ‘enable you to discover the answer to life’s most important questions.’ Fair enough. But then it goes overboard and claims that it will ‘reduce your stress, simplify your decisions, increase your satisfaction, and most important [sic], prepare you for eternity.’ (p.9).
We will refrain from commenting on this beyond saying that it seems to take the roles of the Bible and the Holy Spirit and make them its own. And in that sense it usurps the place of Word and Spirit in its claims.
Clearly then the book has great ambition and makes grand claims for itself. This is no mere guide to the Christian life. No mere signpost to the Scriptures themselves. It reads as if the book gives some kind of inside track to spiritual happiness.
The strange thing is that it tries to speak to the non-Christian about how he or she can discover what life is all about, without beginning with an explanation of what’s wrong with their lives as they are 'without hope and without God in the world'. This book contrives to largely by-pass the apostolic gospel and jumps straight to what is in effect the Christian life – but it applies it to believers and those who have not yet come to saving faith alike.
It is certainly not written for the biblically-minded Christian, because few Christians would, I would hope, accept the vaguely mystical aspects of the structure. There is the whole business about the 40 days for one thing of which much is made in the book’s self-recommendation. Warren claims that some kind of magical importance attaches to the number 40: ‘God considers 40 days a spiritually significant period. Whenever God wanted to prepare someone for his purposes, he took 40 days.’ (p.9) This is simply untrue. It is a pseudo-mystical statement written for a biblically illiterate generation. Some of the ‘examples’ used to justify this sweeping statement are risible. Noah and his 40 days of rain for instance. Apparently the many years it took Noah to build the ark cannot be considered as part of his preparation for God’s purposes! And what about all the people who didn’t go through a 40-day spiritual ‘programme’? Insignificant biblical characters like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Job, Mary, Peter and Paul to name a few – there was no 40-day magical period of preparation. This is utter nonsense – marketing tripe of the worst order.
Warren makes much of the fact that the Scriptures are cited extensively. That is superficially true, but even here there are major problems. The first problem is the way in which the Bible is cited. On almost no occasion is the reference given, so that the reader can look up the verse in his own Bible. Almost all evangelical Christian books encourage the reader – indeed force the reader sometimes – to go to the Bible for themselves. At the very least they enable the reader to note which verses are being quoted. Warren’s book discourages this by giving the references an endnote number. The actual verse references are buried in an appendix at the back of the book. The second problem is that there is a strong tendency to quote from loose paraphrases that fail to convery with any accuracy the content of the Word of God. Warren also has a tendency to quote from a wide range of translations and it might look like he picks the translation to fit his points rather than adjusting his points to ‘fit’ what the Bible actually says. This is pick-and-mix theology for the postmodern world. A perfect example is Warren’s choice for the most often quoted version of Scripture. The very loose paraphrase, The Message, is used most often. It makes the Bible sound contemporary to the reader unfamiliar with the Bible, which may be useful sometimes, but it is often woefully inaccurate and should never be used to back up theological arguments in the way Warren uses it.
Another aspect of the book I don’t like is the ‘My Covenant’ page right at the start of the book. Here the reader is supposed to fill in his name that ‘With God’s help, I commit the next 40 days of my life to discovering God’s purpose for my life.’ That’s some commitment. It’s so shallow, one hardly knows where to begin. Who is this ‘covenant’ being made with and why? To Rick Warren? Only his name and the reader’s appear on it. Certainly not to God and rightly so. The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace—all of humanity is under one or the other in this life and neither last for only 40 days.
Originally, I had planned to work my way through the book and review each chapter, but actually I couldn’t be bothered after about ten days in, so I’m going to spare you any more of this review.
I found an excellent review on the web that pretty much says what I would have written anyway, so if you want to find out more, I commend the review by Tim Challies at http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/book-review-rick-warrens-the-purpose-driven-life.
I'll close with this. The Christian faith is not primarily concerned with giving you a purpose-driven life, though it will do that. No, the Christian faith is primarily concerned with the purpose-driven God revealed in the Scriptures. As the Shorter Catechism put it so well, 'Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.' Warren's book falls short - way short - of this full-orbed biblical vision of the purpose of human life.
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