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Subject: A Review of The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

(Thur., March 31, 2005)

(approx. 6250 words, 11 pp.)

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Is there Meaning, Purpose, and Fulfillment to Life and History, or, No meaning, No purpose, and No fulfillment to life and history? That is the question; in fact that is the one question we all ask, all day, every day? Why? Because it relates to everything we do or say or even think, no?

The Four Spiritual Laws

Some 50 years ago a man named Bill Bright formulated what he called The 4 Spiritual Laws of Life. The first is well-known among Evangelicals, of course, and it is, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." The Second is we cannot know that plan because we are separated from God by our sin, and the Third Law is Christ died for our sins so we can know God personally and know His Plan or Destiny for us, and the Fourth Law is we have to individually turn from our sin and pray to receive Christ personally in order to know God's plans for us and experience Him personally, and so forth. In the ensuing years many people have written and talked about these "truths" or "laws," but no one in this reviewer's mind has ever expounded on the first law so well and how it relates to the other 3 in a truly effective way until Mr. Warren put together his highly popular and very readable book called The Purpose Driven Life.

This Thursday Review of The Purpose Driven Life is probably the most important thing or review we have ever done on this website, or ever will do as far as finding one's individual purpose and meaning goes. That is, if in fact there is a God who has fulfilling plans for each and everyone of us, and in fact if life is not some meaningless, purposeless story, the point of which we can never know! However, if we can restore a larger sense of purpose, virtue, and moral integrity to our lives personally and to our lives in our professions socially, we will profoundly change the culture for years to come, and from a Christian point of view, Good wins out, and true Kingdom values will be established in all spheres of society, whether family and home, marketplace, state house, or even "church house," so to speak. If we are not able to bring larger meaning and purpose to each of these areas or spheres of life and society, well, things presumably will not turn out so well, and we will continue in our historical and cultural decline. All pretty simple really?

Is there a God, and is there a salvation and re-birth and indwelling Spirit by faith in Christ's sacrifice? We have been considering this question on this website over the last 4 or 5 months, and it is a very interesting and practical question, as is the whole corollary to that question which is the whole City-of-God view of history versus the City-of-Man view of history where there is (and in fact can be) no real ultimate meaning and truth. In the City-of-Man view of existence and human existence, life is inevitably and ultimately a meaningless "tale told by an idiot. . . signifying nothing" rather than history's being a real and meaningful story of real Good and real Evil with a Sovereign God working out His will through time in "history," as Augustine's City-of-God view of man and history holds to be the case. You might say the whole point of Augustine is the very idea and reality of a life driven by true or ultimate purpose, meaning, truth, right, and good, and hence everything is "on the table," as the expression goes. The postmodernist (or so-called "Existentialist"), who holds to no real or ultimate truth, meaning or good, understands this all very well, but, of course, the Liberal does not. (The Liberal does not understand anything well? But what's new?)

The pagan ancient Greek and Roman philosophers constructed a philosophical "God" of Truth, Good, Reason, Justice, etc. but not really a conscious Being or Sovereign God as we think of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition where "He" reveals Himself as a "Person" or "Supreme Being" or "Sovereign of the Universe" as we see in Scripture. For example, the American founders frequently referred to GOD as things like the "Sovereign of the Universe" not because they did not believe in a conscious "Supreme Being" but because they did! Still, the best of the pagan ancients such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics reasoned that if some things in life are truly "good," then there must be an ultimate Good, and hence something of what might be called a real philosophical, logical or meaningful GOD, though obviously it is not a GOD revealing himself as a "Person" or "Personality," as such. 

GOD for the ancient Greeks and Romans is more like a "concept" such as the "Logos" or some kind of agent such as "the First Cause." But hence also, similarly, if some things are truly "true" (the ancient Greeks and Romans would say) there must be a Truth, and if some things are truly "just," there must be a Justice, objectively speaking, and so on. And they would say when we are thinking correctly about these things we are exercising Right Reason. I believe it was Augustine himself who said he was glad he did not discover Plato (in particular) before he did Christ, or he may never have come to faith in Christ, no doubt because the truth of Plato is so naturalistically profound and often valid, but it is not immediately clear how the naturalistic "God" of the ancient Greeks and Romans relates to the God of the Hebrews and to salvation and so forth, and, hence, personally to us as individuals. Everybody on board here? (The later Stoics generally rejected Christianity as well for somewhat related reasons of seeing no immediate connection.)

In any case, you might say, in order to make history a true story and one's own life a story of ultimate meaning and purpose, we need more than the naturalistic philosophical "God" of Good, Justice, Truth, Righteousness, and even First Cause of the pagan ancients, though naturalistically they tended to have a very profound understanding of the idea of "GOD," as it were, and the reality of "His" absolute attributes (hence we here use all caps for GOD occasionally), but the "GOD" of the ancient Greeks and Romans was generally not a conscious Being working out his will in history, nor revealing Himself in Covenants nor working in our individual lives through personal faith, salvation, and regeneration. This is all pretty straightforward when you get right down to it. 

It is only with a Conscious Supreme Being that we can have history as an ultimately meaningful "story," with a beginning, ending, and resolution in Judgment, and so forth. And if there is such a big story to all history where God is working out His will through history, there is the possibility of individual meaning for each of us in history as individual parts of this larger story of all Creation and with our individual lives in our new individual spiritual life in the Spirit.

What in the world do these comments here have to do with the book we are reviewing The Purpose Driven Life? That is a good question, no? Post-Modern man says correctly if there is no God, then ultimately everything is permissible, and hence meaningless and with no "purpose." However, the ancient Greeks and Romans without a direct Revelation from God, as the Hebrews, had naturalistically approached the question of morality or ultimate right and wrong, etc., generally, from the opposite direction (of the Hebrews), namely, if something is truly right (or wrong) then there must be a "God," which is the true Right that makes individual cases and our individual lives of morality and justice and truth etc. ultimately morally Good, Right, and True etc. Okay? Everybody following this? (That is, x is not Good simply because God says so (the Hebrew tradition) but rather (the Greeks would say) since x is obviously, rationally, or even self-evidently good, I know it must reflect a God or larger Good, etc.)

The is not a "first cause" Agent God of Aristotle but rather a "real ideal," as it were, of Plato or it was the perfect Reason and Justice of the Natural Law of the Stoics, etc. And for the New Testament Christian this (Logos) Reason concept was not only "God," but became flesh in Christ, no less. But for the ancient Greeks and Romans this necessarily is more a God of philosophy or Reason than of Revelation, obviously, because they had no conscious Supreme Being revealing Himself to them, nor did they have the idea that Christ was the human manifestation of the Logos. The point for us here is without revelation most of these arguments for modern man and ancient man deal with abstract concepts of truth, good, justice, right and wrong, even mathematics, science, and knowledge generally. And these naturalistic ideals or ideas deal with meaning and purpose to the degree we find truth, right and good in our every day lives, but they do not deal with a personal spiritual relationship to God in any significant fashion nor with a God who is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him in faith, etc.

The relationship of History to Good and Justice, and, yes, Purpose. . .

But, regardless, philosophically the Revelation of God in, say, the Ten Commandments gives 10 absolute Principles of pure justice but virtually, no particulars, and of course famously Socrates would ask people things like, "What is justice?" and people would give an answer of a particular case of obvious good or justice or courage or whatever, and Socrates would say, "No, I want to know what Justice or the Good, itself is," etc. And the same sorts of arguments tend to hold for the meaningful and purposeful life and for history as meaningful story.

For history to be a truly meaningful story or for one's individual life to be a truly meaningful story, there has to be a larger, real, ultimate meaning and purpose to things spiritually and philosophically speaking, clearly, and the reverse is also true, namely, if there is indeed a God of Biblical Scripture working His will out through history, this is the ultimate meaning and purpose of life and the story of history, and our purpose is how we as particular individuals relate to this larger story and purpose of history which is, essentially, nothing more, but nothing less, than a Conscious Supreme Being working out His Sovereign will through time.

Purpose and Fulfillment are virtually synonymous in the history of philosophy. Why is this? Fairly simple question really. The Greeks did this so well philosophically speaking we can look at how they did it. They would say things like, the purpose of a knife is to cut things, the purpose of the ship captain is to guide his ship safely to its port or destination etc. And when a thing or person does its or his purpose, it or he "fulfills" its or his purpose, and when something like a knife or even a person does one's job or purpose well or with "excellence" it is a "good" knife or "good" ship captain or whatever one's profession. Simple enough, not complicated?

Augustine of course does this theologically and more generally for us as humans and says, "We were made for Thee (or, that is, You) O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." In essence this is a spiritual purpose and fulfillment of man in creation. But the point here is when a knife cuts well or so fulfills it purpose well, it is a good knife (with no particular moral connotation of good) and when one does one's purpose well as a ship captain, one is a good or excellent ship captain (which can have potentially both a moral and proficiency component to it). But ultimately what the Greeks and Romans figured out is one wants to have not just one's profession well-lived or well-done but one's life well-lived or well-done as whole (morally speaking), and this was called the excellent or virtuous or so-called "good life." (Hence, "the good life" was originally not one of hedonistic self-indulgence, as we think of it today, but one of moral excellence! Talk about a re-definition!)

In any case, the point of the virtuous or good (or, that is, morally good) life was no less than to fulfill your humanity or human purpose, as a particular individual or human being, which included one's particular profession, age, gender, social, and political status and so forth. (If you are taking notes, write that down.) However, nothing can have real or ultimate "meaning" and "purpose" for us individually in any of these areas unless there is a larger real or ultimate meaning and purpose to life generally, that is, a meaning and purpose of God, and of Reason, and of Truth and of Good, and of Right or Righteousness, etc. And, in which case, life is in fact not a meaningless tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, as the postmodernist holds, etc., but a meaningful story in terms of God's meaning and purpose for us. (So far so good? Everybody following this?)

There really is a God and there really is a purpose for your life, and it really will give you a sense of fulfillment to find and do your purpose both in the particulars of your life, family, profession, community and country, etc., and in the general state of your spiritual being in relationship to God, as we worship Him in true spirit and real truth, and this "GOD" is a Conscious spiritual Supreme Being Who has revealed Himself to us through Scripture and the stories therein. The flip side is, of course, if there is no such "GOD," then indeed there is really no meaning, no purpose, and no true fulfillment. We might as well eat, drink, and be merry in mere hedonistic or personal self-indulgence, etc., to no purpose or end. We take our choice on which we think, but it is pretty much one way or another. (Everybody cool with this?)

This book, The Purpose Driven-Life by Rick Warren, is a wonderful book, and it is a very practical book. And it is a huge bestseller and rightly so. It is very well written and very well laid out as a 40 day spiritual growth book of 40 short chapters. Clearly this is something of a 21st century "spiritual exercises" to find or discover "who you really are" and "why you are really on the planet," and how God will open up the doors to answer these questions about the true purpose and fulfillment that we all so long for, and Mr. Warren shows how God will reveal these things to anyone who truly seeks the answers.

"God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. . ." In reality The Purpose Driven Life is a Purpose Filled Life, and this book is a 330 page exposition on this spiritual truth as a very practical reality about not only the very real sovereignty of God in history but the very real purpose God has for everyone's individual life personally, quite literally. (Seemingly, it took 50 years for someone to write this book but at last someone has!)

It is Mr. Warren's contention that we can find our own actual, individual meaning and purpose on earth and in history in the very order of the nature of all things and in the order of all existence in the entire cosmic order, no less, and he is very serious about all of this. No small claim? No wonder the book is an unbelievable bestseller, and for Mr. Warren this meaningful and fulfilling life is the very Purpose of our Relationship to God as individuals.

One of the interesting things in the book is Mr. Warren takes various Bible passages and gives paraphrases of them or actually spiritual truths or insights from various passages but not always exact translations. He says he uses 15 different English Bible translations and paraphrases in writing The Purpose Driven Life. This has its advantages and disadvantages, but it can sometimes bring out a truth that one would not always see in the original.

For example (on page 83), the well-known Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" is rendered (by way of an amplified version), "I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses inner strength into me, that is, I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency." But Mr. Warren is also more than capable of speaking for himself. . 

But, also, Mr. Warren in his own words. . .

Mr. Warren reminds this reviewer a good bit of the popular TV preacher Robert Schuller who is famous for talking of the vision God will give each of us in our hearts for our lives and that "by the inch, it's a cinch," etc. Mr. Warren is not quite so pithy, but in his own words he says, "You were put on earth to make a contribution" (to the Kingdom, obviously). This is late in the book, page 227, but it kind of sums up the whole book and what life is supposed to be about. It is all a matter of seeking and "accepting your assignment" from God, quite literally. Mr. Warren says early in the book, "Nothing matters more than knowing God's purposes for your life, and nothing can compensate for not know them." (p. 29)  "A purpose driven life (is) a life guided, controlled, and directed by God's purposes. . . The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose." (p. 30)  Mr. Warren comments of the Apostle Paul, "The apostle Paul almost single-handedly spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. His secret was a focused life." (p.32)

The fact is, for Mr. Warren and his true Christianity, we all have a purpose, and we either find and fulfill that purpose with our lives or we don't, and therein is the great sense of joy and fulfillment in life or heartbreak and tragedy, and we each must make this decision for ourselves by turning from our natural destructive lives of sin to find God's forgiveness, purpose, and fulfillment for ourselves. Mr. Warren writes, "When anything in creation fulfills its purpose, it brings glory to God." He also comments that, "Jesus will give you everything you need to live for him." For this reviewer this is pretty much what it means to "trust in Jesus," which is not simply for our eternal salvation but for our practical provision in our purpose and various tasks or God-given "assignments"? To trust in God or Jesus means that He is not going to put us out on a limb and saw it off! My words, not Mr. Warren's. (Or, as the expression goes, Jesus is not going to "hang us out to dry," etc., so to speak. Again, my words, of course, Mr. Warren does not use such crude language.)

On that final Judgment day, Mr. Warren says a good bit more eloquently, all that will matter is one thing: "The only thing that will matter, is did you accept what Jesus did for you (in dying for your sins) and did you learn to love and trust him?" And this in essence is to trust in GOD's provision and purposes for our lives both in this life and the next. "We are not an accident" as Mr. Warren says, and "it is not about you."  Purpose in God's design is "far greater" than our own personal desires and goals. Purpose is true meaning and fulfillment, says Mr. Warren, and he even quotes the atheist Bertrand Russell who says correctly, "Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless."  Or, as we like to say here, Dostoyevsky is correct, if there is no God, everything is permissible, and in essence meaningless, or of no true value, or Shakespeare is correct that if there is no God, life is indeed a meaningless "tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing"! But if there is a God with meaning, truth, good, and right, there is or can be a purpose driven life and even purpose driven society correspondingly based on truth and justice for all as well. And, further, if there is a personal Evangelical salvation, there is a re-birth of our old nature as well as a reconciliation to God and a relationship with the indwelling holy Spirit to guide us as we live out our lives with purpose in righteousness.

But in truth, all activities should be or can be done as an act of praise and to the glory of God and not just our main roles and assignments in life or in church service, etc. As Mr. Warren correctly and even profoundly says, "Every human activity, except sin, can be done for God's pleasure if you do it with an attitude of praise. You can wash dishes, repair a machine, sell a product, write a computer program, grow a crop, and raise a family for the glory of GOD." (p.74) He then goes on to ask the reader almost rhetorically, "Will you make pleasing God the goal of your life? There is nothing that God won't do for the person totally absorbed with this goal." (p. 76) There is much truth to this point no doubt, but in truth we are generally not trying to do good and please God in all that we do, at least for the most part we have not set this wisely as our life goal! Often, we are not even trying! At least for the most part I would say that, just looking around at this world we all live in, but the key for Mr. Warren is "surrender" to God. "Surrender is best demonstrated in obedience and trust." While obedience is pretty clear, trust is more risky? Will God will really provide? The key is to mediate on GOD's truth, law, word, promises, abiding presence, etc.  Of this Mr. Warren writes, "Prayer lets you speak to God; meditation lets God speak to you(!). Both are essential to becoming a friend of God."  Or as "David said, 'Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long." (pp. 90-91) Warren even quotes a famous Christian named E. Stanley Jones who said, "If you don't surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos." (p. 82) And, in truth, is not surrendering to chaos a meaningless and purposeless life?

But, to put it more bluntly, Mr. Warren writes, "Spiritual growth is not automatic. It takes intentional commitment(!)." (p.179) "Many believers are more faithful to reading their daily newspaper than their Bibles. It's no wonder we don't grow. We can't watch television for three hours, then read the Bible for three minutes and expect to grow (spiritually)." (p.188) We, as readers, can say back to Mr. Warren on these points: "The truth hurts!"  In truth, we (at least on average) watch closer to 6 hours of TV a day and read the Bible less than 60 seconds, no? But it is our sin and our lifestyles of sin which separate us from God more than anything, no question about it? Mr. Warren even quotes Jesus, himself, no less. "Jesus said, 'For from within, out of a person's heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, eagerness for lustful pleasure, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness'." (p. 203) All these bad things come from within us, and we are all naturally subject to them! And, of course, unless we turn from our sin, and sin condition, we will never find our God-given purposes in this life, and we will even face almost certainly the condemnation of the Final Judgment. (Not pretty?)

What to do with evil thoughts, desires, and other such 'demons'? Well, according to Mr. Warren, "Martin Luther said, 'You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair'." (p. 205) But, in many ways just as tragic to the sinful life, if not as deadly, is perhaps the "worthless life"?  "David prayed, 'Keep me from paying attention to what is worthless'." (p. 210) This is a very profound point? The fact is, in the end, this book is not really about turning from one's sin nor even about Evangelical salvation as such, these things are more assumed. The point of life is to find God's personal purpose for our lives, our so-called "assignment" and our true pleasure and true fulfillment in it, and this is not a worthless or meaningless thing!

Though some have criticized the book for not telling the discipline one needs and the "spiritual" resistance and even worldly resistance one will find in the Purpose driven life, I do not think that is a fair criticism. Mr. Warren is very clear, I think! "The Purpose Driven Life" requires single-minded "focus" on God's will and provision and plans for us! In truth, there is nothing more challenging and exciting than the Christian life, nor more risky, most would probably say? But, regardless, the point of this book is to find out why God created you in the first place! And if you miss out on that, forget it! Or, at least, one has a great tragedy of a wasted life. At one point Mr. Warren makes the observation that "Everything that happens to you has spiritual significance." But in truth not just everything that "happens" to us but more importantly everything we "do" as individuals has "spiritual significance." In fact the Bible tells us "God" has ordered all our lives and creation itself, so much so that even the very hairs on our head are numbered (Matt. 10:30) and a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God's consent (Matt. 10:29), let alone Empires rise and fall, as Benjamin Franklin so wisely pointed out!

Ultimately this means that everything in life and history has some spiritual meaning, significance and "purpose," and in truth the larger question which arises out of this book is not simply "the purpose driven life" of each of us individually but "the purpose driven society"! This would be the purpose driven law and legal system, the purpose driven educational system, the purpose driven entertainment industry, the purpose driven field of politics, the purpose driven understanding of history and truth, good, and justice, etc. Not only are our hearts individually restless until they rest in God, but is everything in creation groans for God's presence and deliverance the Bible tells us (in Romans 8:22) as we do personally as we long for even a society to "the glory of GOD"? And, of course, this becomes ultimately Augustine's City-of-God vision working itself out through history in time, and it is the American founders' vision of a City on a Hill with liberty and justice for all, and so forth.

Purpose, as the ancient Greeks and Romans saw, involves primarily integrity and righteousness (or virtue) in order to fulfill one's role (re-call our ship captain) in each of the relevant areas of our lives and in each of the various spheres of society. (Hello?) And, this is true whether in our family lives or the business marketplace or the arena of ideas in education, entertainment, law, and government, etc.  These concepts of purpose and fulfillment were seen traditionally to be basic "truths" of life whether speaking about marketplace practices, fair wages and prices, or whether speaking about help for the less fortunate, or if you do not work, you do not eat, or one should not take bribes, or about how to do rational objective wise analysis, and so forth, and so on. This stuff is not new nor modern Rocket Science, folks, but it somewhat "lost" to our current culture more generally. Traditionally one had the good life of individual moral integrity in order to have the good or just society. This was not simply a Christian truth, but Philosophy 101 for two or three thousand years up until the 1960s in America! The Good society with liberty and justice for all was in fact called a true Republic or so-called "Common-wealth" composed of virtuous citizens, was it not? This means the Purpose Driven life as well as the purpose driven society is not some mystical reality so much as a practical spiritual reality which we each choose to have or be a part of, or not.

What Mr. Warren does is show how the new Christian life in the holy Spirit of the believer relates us, individually, to the larger reality of all history. But, in the end, what this means is the Purpose Driven life or Purpose filled life is much more than what each of us individually feels may be our purpose. Rather it is being a part of a larger vision of God's will for the Body politic as a whole, as well as for us in personal internal experience as each of us as individuals works out his or her own "personal" salvation with "fear and trembling," as the expression goes, which, of course, assumes that one has entered into the Christian "salvation" New Covenant in the first place in order to be working it out in the second place, whether with so-called proverbial "fear and trembling," or not?

And how do we do this "working out of our salvation" in our own lives as a part of the larger purpose driven society? We do it with moral purity, integrity, and righteousness, no? Is there really some other "spiritual truth" way? No, there isn't. Classically, of course, this is stated by the minor prophet Micah who asks the question: "What does the Lord require of you?"  Micah answers by saying that "God requires that we to do justly (or right or righteously), love mercy, and walk humbly (or in such a spirit) with our Lord." (Micah 6:8) Again, not "new" and not "rocket science." There is not a whole lot more to the Purpose Driven Life, but not a whole lot less, either! The bottom-line here is, as Mr. Warren says right off the bat, "It is not about you." But why do people reject the "Purpose Driven Life"? Presumably they think it is "about them" or they do not think they are in need of a Savior, or because quite simply they do not want to give up control of their own life for any larger purposes or meaning, even if there is a God who loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life as part of all history and the story of mankind on earth.

The founders of America were very conscious of all of this idea of God's purpose for us as individuals as well as for the larger purposes of society and government. In fact, you might even call their efforts at founding America, "the Purpose Driven Republic"! However we in our time over the past few decades have lost not simply our sense of personal God-given purpose and fulfillment with moral integrity, we have also, correspondingly, lost this larger vision socially and historically as human beings of what life as a society or culture on this planet is about in the larger cosmos within the larger order of things. And, hence, it is no surprise that we have lost a sense of God-given purpose in and for the various professions of law, education, politics, business, entertainment, and so on and so forth. And this tends particularly to be the case for the professions which are supposed to have a larger meaning and purpose by their very nature, but also as well we have lost a sense of purpose for almost all professions and trades and even simple things like our roles as fathers and husbands, and mothers and wives, and even as children! (Paul talks about this, of course, in Ephesians Chapter 5 & 6)

In any case, I think, we do not need to create "new" professional societies to be "Christian," as such, but rather, generally to call all of the professions back to their founding purpose whether these were overtly stated or merely implicitly understood! Rare is the field or profession of any sort which did not originally share in or have outright a larger sense of social purpose and integrity, which has for whatever the reasons been lost over the last few decades, if not perverted into something almost unrecognizable? It seems today there is hardly a field or occupation in America which does not need to re-think, shall we say, its founding principles and purposes for its existence?

It is all a matter of "Consciousness," and thinking on "these things"?

In short, we need a larger "consciousness" of the "larger purposes" of all professions, activities, and life endeavors, as "God" intends them to serve the larger society, or so-called "Body" politic. And, again, this also is clearly not Rocket Science. In truth we are probably nowhere close to such a "larger consciousness" as individuals or as a society at this time, but this book by Mr. Warren may be a beginning to at least start us thinking in this direction! In fact, if something does not serve some worthwhile purpose even if it is simply for R and R, what is its reason for being whether professionally, personally, socially, culturally, or even politically?

In general, as a practical matter what should we think on as we serve God's purposes in all spheres of social activity with truth, justice, goodness, mercy, righteousness, etc.? Quite simply Paul says, "Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." (Philippians 4:8) Simple enough? And, in short and in truth, these are the things which give meaning and purpose to our lives individually and to our society as a whole, no?

In summary one can say, The Good, the Right, The True, and even just the classically defined Beautiful, all give a sense of noble purpose, whatever one's life, role or profession, etc. In fact, again, this is the whole idea behind a Commonwealth which is what a true Republic is supposed to be, if I am not mistaken? And, of course, such a "Common-wealth" avoids the extremes of radical individualism, on the one hand, and excessive collectivism, on the other, both of which have no balanced sense of common purpose or common good and no sense of true or proper (that is, virtuous) individual fulfillment. (These two extremes are called libertarianism and liberalism, if I am not mistaken? And ultimately both are forms of humanism, no?)

Clearly, the book being reviewed here, The Purpose Driven Life, is not an attempt to look at these larger societal organizational concerns of "the Purpose Driven Society," but rather more simply it is a spiritual exercise book of how each of us as individuals can find the Purpose Driven, Spirit-renewed, Spirit-filled and Spirit-led life, which is the only thing which will give true meaning and purpose to our lives as human beings, at least Mr. Augustine would say, as well as this guy Warren (whoever he is). In any case, this Mr. Warren shows how our individual lives fit into the larger Plans and Purposes of God on earth and even God's Plans and Purposes for eternity, and on this score, this reviewer would, at any rate, give Mr. Warren about the highest of marks one could get, in his call for each of us to turn from our worthless and wasted lives of sin and degradation to the noble and truly fulfilling Purposes of God for each and every one of us. This is called "true living" and "the abundant life," if I am not mistaken? But who wants that these days?