“The Purpose Driven Life”– a Review

[DavidV]

An attempt at communicating ideas to Christians:

While browsing Amazon recently, a book titled “The Purpose Driven Life” caught my eye. The name interested me because a sense of purpose is indeed crucially important for human beings. Without a sense of purpose, and of values to act towards and achieve, life would indeed be useless and meaningless. With my interest thus piqued, I opened the first (virtual) page to investigate what purpose the book suggested. The book begins with the quote from Bertrand Russell, who said “Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” Here is the first paragraph from the book:

It’s not about you.

The purpose of your life is far greater than your personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions.  If you want to know why you were placed on this planed, you must begin with God.  You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.

The rest of the book, as you might guess, expands on this answer. I would like to analyze the basic alternative presented by the author, but before I do that, I will consider the question he attempts to answer. Is the question of purpose of one’s life important at all? Does man even need a purpose to life?

We can begin the analysis by asking, “Why does the question of purpose arise for human beings?” The issue is not universal to all entities. A stone, for example, does not have a purpose. It is created by some process, exists for some time, and then is destroyed by some other process. At no point does the question “What am I here for?” arise for the rock, since rocks are inorganic entities lacking a consciousness. Some would argue that it is applicable to man-made objects, such as a table, but in such cases, the purpose exists only because a conscious being such as a man created it to achieve some value. Man might also decide to use a rock, a tree, or a field for some end, but these things only have a purpose insofar as they serve achieve some value by a conscious being, and not one inherent in themselves.

Living beings clearly act to achieve particular values by particular means. Their actions are aimed at specific ends – namely, their survival and reproduction. But the question of purpose does not arise for them either because their actions are automatic, determined by instinct. They cannot choose, as men do, to live by one means or another, to be carnivores or herbivores, to live or die. Unlike non-living entities, they have various values, such as food, reproduction, and shelter, but they have no means to choose which values to achieve or which course of action to take to achieve them beyond their immediate environment.

Human beings are unique in being a living being without an automatic guide to actions and values. We alone must choose which values we want to achieve, and the means we take to achieve them. Like animals, our survival is still conditional -- we must take a particular course of action in order to remain alive, but the means to achieve the values necessary for our survival are not automatically given to us by instinct. We have some basic urges – to eat, or to reproduce, but no means to achieve them without conscious action. In place of instinct, nature has equipped man with the facility of reason – the use of his senses and his rational faculty to gain knowledge of reality and then act on it. If an animal’s instinct fails to provide the values it needs in a given environment, it will die – but a man has the capacity to adapt to almost any environment he finds, as the proliferation of humanity on every corner of the earth demonstrates. The basic question every man faces as a living being is therefore “to live or not to live,” and since reason is his only means of survival, his basic choice is “to think or not to think.” Every value we enjoy in our civilized, comfortable, existence is the product of the application of man’s mind to reality. The food we eat, the cars we drive, the entertainment we enjoy are all products of some man’s mind. The difference between our comfortable lives and the short, dangerous, and miserable existence that our ancestors eked out in trees, caves, huts, and caverns not so long ago was created – and is continually made possible by application of the reason to the problem of man’s survival. Let us now see how the view presented by the atheist Bertrand Russell, and the answer given by pastor Rick Warren, the author of the “The Purpose Driven Life” relates to these facts.

The Christian perspective is that the issue of man’s survival is irrelevant to the question of what the purpose of man’s survival is. As pastor Warren stresses repeatedly, our earthly values- whether in our career, family, friends, or any other are in themselves meaningless. The very things that make life on earth possible and pleasurable are meaningless to him. Instead, our actions should be focused on a higher, un-earthly realm, which contains the answers of our existence. “Unless you assume the existence of God, the purpose of life is meaningless,” he says, thereby voiding our selfish happiness as a worthwhile purpose to existence. Instead, he argues that “We were planned for God’s pleasure, so your first purpose is to offer real worship.” According to him, man’s purpose is to be a sacrificial offering (sacrificial, because we are to sacrifice earthly values) to an invisible, unknowable entity, who’s only proof is an ancient myth and the fact that we have not yet uncovered all the secrets of nature. The very fact that the target of our sacrifice is unknowable is justification for greater faith (that is, belief without evidence) in it.

What alternative does the skeptical atheist, such as Bertrand Russell offer in response to the Christian mystic? He agrees with the mystics that without God, life is meaningless, but seeing that there is no evidence for any supernatural realm, he therefore rejects meaning. He agrees with the mystics that without God man has no free will, so he rejects free will and volition. He agrees with the mystics that without God, there can be no morality (“If God is dead, all is permitted” as that quote falsely attributed to Dostoevsky goes) so he rejects morality. In the crucial question of man’s existence, the skeptic and the mystic agree that man has no purpose, volition, or virtue apart for some external entity. Man’s life in itself therefore, is meaningless, the skeptics and the mystic agree, and only has value so far as man offers himself as a sacrifice to some greater entity or purpose.

The skeptic denies the supernatural, but he usually proposes some other “higher” purpose for existence. He replaces subservience to the supernatural with subservience to some other, equally mystical or collectivist entity, such as service to society (socialism), the state (communism), the race (fascism), the environment (environmentalism), the ethnic group (multiculturalism) or emotionalism (Nietzschean nihilism). The skeptic simply replaces the worship of one supernatural and unknowable entity with another. The mystics present man as a pathetic ghost, unworthy of life, in conflict with his physical (baser) nature, and existing only as a sacrificial offering for another realm, The skeptics present man as a Frankenstein - a walking bag of chemicals without freedom, meaning, or self-esteem. The mystics demand that man sacrifice his worldly values for the supernatural, and the skeptics either argue that man sacrifice his life to the collective, or argue that he should pursue values whatever he wants, while denying his basic means (his rational mind) of achieving it.

Is this in fact the only alternative man faces – to choose which entity to sacrifice himself to? Is morality measured by the totality to which man abdicates his own, selfish interests in order to serve some “higher” and “greater” end? If denying one’s “selfish” interests means denying the things that make life on earth possible and pleasurable, then isn’t death the highest reward of following such a moral code? After all, the only way to be a consistent altruist, and consistently reject one’s “lower” urges, is to sacrifice everything one values, including the things that make life possible. The only way to practice the religious – or the collectivist morality and continue living, is to live a life of guilty contradiction, pursuing one’s values one moment, while denying them the other, using reason for “practical” matters, but denying it when it is truly important. Is it any wonder that faced with the alternative of being a ghost and a sacrificial offering or an unthinking bag of flesh, blindly following hormonal urges, so many men either live a life of guilty contradiction or reject morality and philosophy entirely – becoming even more helpless to whatever utterings they unthinkingly and uncritically accept.

The false alternative presented by the mystics and the skeptics is not the only kind existence open to man. The primary requirement of man’s survival offers man both a purpose of existence and a means to achieving it. Man’s life – the choice to live or not to live, is the basic alternative that makes morality both possible and necessary. Life is the trait that makes morality possible for man, and reason is the unique characteristic that makes it necessary. Without the possibility of death, no moral values are necessary, and without the faculty of reason, no moral choice is possible. The primary moral value is each man’s own life, and the primary virtue is rationality. To quote Ayn Rand, “Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality — not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.” Morality is therefore not a means to a supernatural realm, a restrain on the enjoyment of earthly values, a supernatural revelation, a social consensus, an absolutist commandment, or a biological imperative, but a practical, selfish means of living a complete, happy, meaningful earthly existence through the consistent application of reason to the question of man’s life.

This moral code represents the total opposite of the mystic and the collectivist moralities. The Christians pervert morality by deeming man guilty for the actions of one man – and then claim that redemption comes from the actions of another. The skeptics pervert morality by enslaving man to live for the needs of everyone but himself, or by denying morality outright, and enslaving him to his emotions. As man’s reason has discovered more and more of the deepest secrets of the universe, he has improved his condition tremendously - even as the mystics and the skeptics systematically deny that man’s reason has any efficacy or significance to his existence. Both pervert morality by denying the very things that make life possible and meaningful – reason, egoism, self-esteem. Both oppose the virtues man necessary for man to thrive – independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productivity, pride by advocating self-sacrifice and collectivism, faith, mercy, dependence on the supernatural/collective, and humility in their place.

Here is the undiluted evil of “The Purpose Driven Life,” from the third paragraph of the book:

“We ask self-centered questions like What do I want to be?  What should I do with my life?  What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams, and my future? But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life’s purpose.  The Bible says, “It is God who directs the lives on his creatures; everyone’s life is in his power.” [emphasis author’s] 

Christianity requires us to reject our goals, ambitions, dreams, and our very lives as moral values, and demands that we sacrifice them to a supernatural realm. The author recognizes man’s vital need for a sense of purpose, moral worth, and then denounces all the things te them p. He claims to offer a “purpose driven life” but instead gives us a death-driven sa. I at I

[BurgessLau]

An attempt at communicating ideas to Christians:

While browsing Amazon recently, a book titled “The Purpose Driven Life” caught my eye.  The name interested me because a sense of purpose is indeed crucially important for human beings. [...]

In my conversations with Christians about purpose, discussion revolves around two words: "of" and "in."

Christians speak of a purpose of life here on earth: to prepare us for eternal life in the next world. Most Christians then go on to agree that one should have a purpose in life, but such purpose serves merely to attain salvation by doing God's work in one form or another in this world.

I am convinced that I need a purpose in life, and it is happiness -- my happiness in this world. This purpose serves as an integrator of all my knowledge and actions. It subsumes lesser purposes -- central purpose in life (beloved work), friendships, and favorite leisure activities. -- in a hierarchy of values.

These differences are sometimes (humorously, I hope) called "philosophy of prepositions." The mere difference in prepositions reflects a world -- or two worlds -- of difference in philosophy.

[Sherlock]

BurgessLau,

You wrote: "I am convinced that I need a purpose in life, and it is happiness -- my happiness in this world."

Well put (as usual). I would point out, though, that traditional, orthodox Christianity does not disagree with your position. I am thinking here of Aquinas, who writes: "The last end of man's life is stated to be happiness". No one seeks happiness in order to be rich, or powerful, or wise, but people seek riches, or power, or wisdom because they think these will make them happy. So Thomistic Christianity would posit that the pursuit of purpose OF life, as you put it, also provides the happiness IN life.

This view is not always shared by Christians of the Protestant (and particularly fundamentalist) bent, who seem a bit Gnostic in that they often regard material things as evil. I would guess that the author Warren is in this category.

[Evangelical Capitalist]

While browsing Amazon recently, a book titled “The Purpose Driven Life” caught my eye. The name interested me because a sense of purpose is indeed crucially important for human beings.

I've seen this book, on coffee tables and in bookstores, all too frequently. Churches around here, and elsewhere I expect, have held "40 Days of Purpose" programs and such, based on Warren's book. Like you, I read the sample pages on Amazon and came to the same conclusion: this book is evil.

Next time I see someone claiming, "Altruism doesn't mean all the nasty things Ayn Rand said it does," I need direct them no further than this book. It's pure self-abnegation.

[Zoso]

Funny that Bertrand Russell would say that, as an atheist. I've read many of his essays on religion, and I agree with almost all of them.

[Betsy]

I am thinking here of Aquinas, who writes: "The last end of man's life is stated to be happiness". No one seeks happiness in order to be rich, or powerful, or wise, but people seek riches, or power, or wisdom because they think these will make them happy. So Thomistic Christianity would posit that the pursuit of purpose OF life, as you put it, also provides the happiness IN life.

That is the same message as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Thomas was, above all, an Aristotelian. It was ideas like that which destroyed medieval Christianity and laid the foundation for the Renaissance.

[ChristopherSchlegel]

I have also spied that book's title. I was curious until I found out it was written in the context of "God/Christianity". So I never read it.

Your review/essay was excellent. Thanks for writing & posting it. It was a joy to read: organized, concise...a nifty little "demolishion" job!