A Catholic Reviews The Purpose-Driven Life
The Purpose-Driven Life:What On Earth Am I Here For?
by Rick Warren
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2002, 339 Pages
It's too bad Catholics don't write best-selling books explaining that human beings are made to know God, love God and serve God in this world and be happy with Him in the next.
Such books might go a little way toward reducing the aimless or herd-following, morally-lax existences that even religious people live. But alas and alackaday, Catholics are too busy writing refutations of The Da Vinci Code and (and as the USCCB actually did) guidelines on how to make movies in ways that will not stir up the Twelve Tribes.
Thus another field is wide open to fundamentalists and Rick Warren seems to be sweeping across it with the volume in quo--a series of short daily meditations--and numerous PDL spin-offs.
The Purpose-Driven Life starts with the right premise and from a generically Christian vantage, is correct. However, being a Protestant work, it is Bible-based and shuts out the insights and wisdom of Catholicism (although the author does use New American Bible quotes and mentions a Catholic saint, omitting the latter's title.).
The Protestant concept of a "personal relationship with God (the individual + God)" is abundant here, too. The Catholic concept is of a personal relationship with God through his Church, a community of fellow wayfarers stretching back across the centuries who help each other relate to God. The Catholic model reminds us that others are also intended for beatification and that we must work to help them achieve it as others--such as the Saints and our fellow Catholics--help us.
Working to make a world which leads others to beatification is a big part of fulfilling our purpose. As the great Epistle of James (which Luther didn't like) tells us, deeds demonstrate true faith.
Which brings us to a disturbing trait of contemporary fundamentalist theology, also evident in PDL. I am speaking of the tendency to diminish this earthly life to a mere launching pad to Heaven where those in the rocketship are focused on the blast-off with little regard for the planet they're counting down to leave. This is why many find the business with The Rapture alarming. How much interest are you going to have in revealing God's Kingdom in this world to save souls if you think this world is going to end soon?
PDL dosn't mention The Rapture, but it does impart an attitude that mortal life isn't much more than a testing center where your mission is to prove you're worthy of salvation. Yes, we should put things in God's hands and pray not to worry etc., but not to the point where we are anesthetized to life, indifferent to the fate of others, waiting for our deaths, focused only on our own meeting with our maker. This life--however an infinitesimal part of our existence it may be--is important, important enough for God to join us as one of us and make us part of his incarnation to continue his work. And of course, we can never presume that we are saved. We can only hope to be.
Copyright 2004 by Neal J. Conway. All rights reserved.