Deconstructing The Purpose Driven Life - Chapter 36

Made for a Mission

I'm not sure how many people have been driven to drink by The Purpose Driven Life but my guess is that it's been more than a few. My ride through this chapter was greatly wind-aided by a 2007 Argentine Masi Pasfo Doble.

If you were only going to read one chapter of this book, this would probably be the one I would suggest. Richard explains how Christians have a twofold mission on earth: service to believers and service to unbelievers. As you might expect, I was more interested to hear what he had to say about the latter than the former.

Richard tells us that Christians have a mandatory mission to tell others about god. He compares the importance of telling the unconverted about how they can have eternal life as telling a neighbour who was afflicted with cancer or AIDS about the cure.

There were two parts about this chapter that I found worthy of mentioning here:

1. Richard talks about the second coming of Christ and specifically when that is expected to occur. He cites Matthew 24:14 which tells us: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." That's all fine and good and, as the Jehovah's Witnesses know only too well, trying to call the time of the supposed Second Coming is a mug's game. However, what interests me (and I have never received a satisfactory explanation) is why Yahweh waited approximately 100,000 years of human history before delivering his boy up for the crucifixion. If anyone has heard an apologist's answer to this, I would be interested to hear it.

2. In order to impress the importance of saving souls, Richard relates the deathbed delerium of his preacher father who kept repeating: "Got to save one more for Jesus!". This was a touching description which gives us some insight into the heavy indoctrination young Richard must have received in his youth. It also raises one of my favorite questions for Christian fundamentalists: what happens to the bush pygmy who lives and dies without ever hearing about the Bible or Jesus? If the answer is that they go to hell, that's a strange outcome for someone who never had the chance to accept the substitutionary atonement that was apparently there for the taking if they had only known about it. If the answer is that they are saved because they never had the chance to "reject" god, why would evangelicals expose innocents to the risk of eternal damnation instead of leaving them in blissful (heavenly) ignorance. Once again, I'm sure that Christians have an answer for this one and I'm all ears.