Critical Review of The Purpose Driven Life: The Christian Oriented Text That Swept the Nation

I take issue with this text. I take issue with its use of rhetorical devices to create assumptions about the nature of our world. I chafe under this work’s Christian paradigm; it’s not so subtle effort to make the reader a co-conspirator in an all or nothing value system. I don’t like much of the charged language, glory for example from day 7. 

How many readers these days take the deeper meaning of the word glory beyond, honor, renown, or a special distinction to the more powerful interpretation as resplendent beauty, magnificence, or the splendor and bliss of heaven? Does an elder care, underpaid nurse’s aide really empty bedpans for the glory of God? In the most esoteric sense, yes, but I doubt any water cooler conversations revolve around the notion. I’m off put by leading statements such as “The only time most people think about death is at funerals” (39). 

To go on to assume that “God intentionally draws back” goes too far in presuming the nature and pattern of something unknowable (43). Have I even mentioned the repeated use of open-ended suggestions, which create a tone of talking down to the reader at times? I could go on to take philosophical issue with many tangential supports of the thought system expressed here but I won’t. Not matter how much I balk at the delivery I cannot disparage the importance of the message. Even a coarse voice can carry the sweetest melodies (think of John Prine).

The message that each individual has a reason for living transcends all awkwardness. It is always welcome to be reminded that each one of us can secure our own heavenly rewards as well as the comfort of others through serving God in our own capacity. The wonder of the great gift of free will assures us that our hand cannot be forced but must by its own intention labor for the greater adoration of God and for the sparks of Godness carried within others.