Deconstructing The Purpose Driven Life - Chapter 39

Balancing Your Life

I would love to know what percentage of those poor suckers who started reading The Purpose Driven Life made it to chapter 39. A safe bet would be less than half and my money would be on far less.

In this chapter, Richard sums up his lordy's five purposes for your life. The Golden Rule is included in this list and I would never criticize Christianity for promoting that purpose. My difficulty lies with the other four purposes listed by Richard (he really likes lists):

• "Love God with all your heart" (i.e. worship). Two problems with this one. How can you love someone/something that you are fairly certain does not even exist? Even if you could accept lordy's existence, how can you love someone/something that demands adoration?


• "Go and make disciples" (i.e. evangelism). Richard is a generous supporter of the efforts to tackle global poverty and disease, including the spread of HIV/AIDS. He also supports literacy and education efforts around the world. While these charitable efforts should be lauded, he clearly has an ulterior motive - he wants to "save" those he helps. This is precisely why I wince when people talk about all the good works performed by religious institutions around the world. If you give a dollar to Richard's Saddleback Church, they will spend some of it helping those in need but only after they pay their clergy, maintain their opulent place of worship and train those who they will fly to the far stretches of the earth to preach the gospel. Why not just give your dollar to Oxfam and cut out the proselytizing middleman?


• "Baptize them into ..." (i.e. fellowship). What Richard is talking about here is the importance of maintaining interaction with those who share your delusions. This is Cult Maintenance 101.


• "Teach them to do all things" (i.e. discipleship). This is Richard's way of saying that his followers should become like Christ as disciples of Christ. In this regard, I would concede that Jesus of Nazareth was a great moral teacher. This is not meant to suggest that I would want anyone to emulate all of Jesus' teachings. For example, in Why I am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell (pictured above) observed:
  

"There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation".