Pursuing Holiness

A friend of mine who is a new Christian asked me what I thought of The Purpose Driven Life.

My first reaction was that Rick Warren is poison and should be avoided at all costs.   But that was the conclusion I’ve come to over time, and I didn’t have anything handy I could specifically point to that explained such a visceral reaction.  Was it my distaste for the Purpose Driven Life which my family received as a gift from a well-meaning friend?  Was it the fact that he’s involved his church with politics?  That he’s known to many as the Protestant Pope, and as a Reformed Christian, such an term is anathema to me?  Was it his disgraceful apology to Muslims for offenses committed by Christianity and how he asked Allah for forgiveness, effectively renouncing his avowed faith?  Is it the tacky Hawaiian shirt?

All of the above.  But how to explain that to someone who is new to Christianity, who doesn’t know the jargon or the cultural, historical, or political aspects of the church?  And none of those things directly address the question - what do I think of Warren’s book?  I know I didn’t like it, but not having looked at it in several years, I couldn’t remember specifically why.  But Google is my friend.

This article is lengthy, specific, and handily debunks The Purpose Driven Life for all the reasons I remember not liking it, especially this one:

Rick Warren begins the first day of his journey by saying, “It’s not about you” (Warren: 17). Yet the entire book “feels” like it is about you and reads like self-help literature. He dedicates the book to “you” on the first page after the copyright information and uses the pronoun “you” continually throughout the book. …
…His statement that this is not about “you” is disingenuous (insincere). His style, word usage, Man-centeredness, distorted Bible translations, and many overt statements show that the book is about you!

Here is one more example of how obtrusive the personal pronoun “you” is in Warren’s writing:

Your unspoken life metaphor influences your life more than you realize. It determines your expectations, your values, your relationships, your goals, and your priorities. For instance, if you think life is a party, your primary value in life will be having fun. If you see life as a race, you will value speed and will probably be in a hurry much of your time. If you view life as a marathon, you will value endurance. If you see life as a battle or a game, winning will be very important to you (Warren: 42). (italics in original; bold emphasis mine)

Here we have sixteen instances of “you” or “your” in one short paragraph. Notice also how Warren speaks what is no more than his own personal opinion as if it were God’s truth. He claims a “life metaphor” determines much of who we are. By what authority does he make such a claim? This is nothing but human wisdom. Warren started out this section saying, “The way you see your life shapes your life. How you define life determines your destiny” (Warren 41). Why should I believe these statements? Warren speaks from his own self as if he were God’s authoritative spokesperson. This is Christianized humanism. Our thoughts and metaphors have nothing to do with the gospel. We need to deny self, not set up the right thoughts and life metaphors to assure a wonderful destiny.

However, the author, Bob DeWaay, went much further than simple observations like this one.  He tackled the book, Berean fashion, and The Purpose Driven Life collapsed like a house of cards.

 Here is Warren’s quote, “The Bible says, ‘Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self’” (Warren: 19).  There is an endnote that takes us to the back of the book. Once there, looking for endnote 3, we have to figure out which of the forty days we are in. So with one finger in the endnote section, we go back to where we started to find out we were in day one. Now we go back to the end note section for day one and find out the reference is to Matthew 16:25 Msg. Assuming that msg is not the food additive, we proceed to the section in the back of the book that tells us the meaning of the abbreviations, and we find out that it is from a Bible called The Message. Now, having determined what passage is under consideration, we get out a real Bible (not a paraphrase) and find out what Matthew 16:25 says. Here it is: “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25).

Now we need to compare Matthew 16:25 with The Message perversion of it. In the context, Jesus was speaking of dying to self by taking up one’s cross (Matthew 16:24).  The cross was not a burden to bear, but an executioner’s device. A person seen carrying his cross had literally been sentenced to death and was on the way to the place where he would be executed. So the person who “loses his life” is the one who has died to all hopes and dreams that the “self” ever had in this life. He is willing to suffer the loss of everything, even life itself if need be, for the sake of the gospel. His reward is eternal life. The person who considers the things of this life more important than the cross shall lose his life eternally. He has made the things of this life more important than his eternal soul. We are either willing to die to everything through the cross and gain eternal life, or we will cling to the things of this sinful world and gain hell.

Having established the meaning of Matthew 16:25 in context, now we must return to the verse as cited by Warren: “Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.” Matthew 16:25 is not discussing self-help, it is discussing life and death. Matthew 16:25 is not discussing “finding your true self.” The idea of a “true self” is a term of psychology and is not found in the Bible. Matthew 16:25 is not talking about self-sacrifice, it is talking about dying to self. About the passage John MacArthur says this, “It’s not about exalting me, it’s about slaying me. It’s the death of self. You win by losing, you live by dying. And that is the heart message of the gospel” (MacArthur: 5). Warren’s version of the passage suggests that by self-sacrifice we find our “true selves.” All false religions teach self-sacrifice, and finding one’s true self is a New Age lie. The truth of the gospel is that we must die to self through the cross and put all of our hope in Christ by faith in His finished work.

Now, having established that The Message does not even have the same concepts as the Biblical passage it claims to be a paraphrase of, let’s return to Warren’s book and see how Warren uses it. He uses it to show that we need to find out the purposes God created us for. He says, “It is about becoming what God created you to be” (Warren: 19). Now we have been Bereans, searched the Scriptures, and found that Warren is abusing them. He has obscured the clear gospel message in Matthew 16:24, 25 and replaced it with a spiritual journey to find the “true self.” So Warren ostensibly is telling us we do not need self-help and then sends us on a self-sacrificing journey to find our true self (which is self-help). This man is the master of confusing his readers.

And he also called Warren out on the annoying warm-fuzzies:

Warren’s terminology to describe God provides a picture of God as a kindly grandfather who gushes with warm, fuzzy feelings. For example, he has a chapter that tells us what makes God smile. He uses Noah as an example. He writes, “But there was one man who made God smile. The Bible says, ‘Noah was a pleasure to the Lord’” (Warren: 69). This is a citation of Genesis 6:8 from the Living Bible. Again the paraphrase turns a verse that is God-centered into one that is man-centered. The NASB says, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” The Bible tells what Noah received from God. The poor translation Warren uses makes Noah the agent and God the recipient. The NKJV is more pointed: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8; NKJV). In the Biblical account God gives grace to Noah, in Warren’s account Noah gives pleasure to God. Here is how Warren interprets Genesis 6:8: “God said, ‘This guy brings me pleasure. He makes me smile. I’ll start over with his family’” (Warren 69). He twists Genesis 6:8 to promote his man-centered theology and obscure the fact that it was God’s grace that made Noah who he was.

The same website has this handy “discernment tool” which lists the verses referenced in the Purpose Driven Life in columns with better translations and the references so you can look them up yourself, to see if they’re in context.  So while the article’s debunking is more than adequate, you can conveniently tackle it yourself.  A lot of churches start the “40 Days of Purpose” program with either a Lent or an Easter kickoff.  Now is the time to get to the truth about what this book teaches.

written by Laura