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On the best-selling Bible self-help book ever

On the best selling Bible self-help book ever.

I don’t usually review Bible study self-help books, but Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, is so influential it deserves a post of its own.

The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for almost two years. It sold 32 million copies within its first decade. Fifty million copies had been sold in more than 85 languages by 2020. A survey of Christian leaders in 2005 asked which books were most influential in their lives and ministries. The Purpose Driven Life was the most frequent response (Wiki).

The book has an intriguing side story. Captive (2005), a docudrama, tells the story of Ashley Smith, who was held hostage in her apartment by Brian Nichols. Smith told reporters that during this time she read chapter 33 of The Purpose Driven Life to Nichols, which she says led Nichols to release her. After this story was on CNN, Warren’s book became Amazon’s number 2 best-seller.*

I imagine Warren’s book has helped some people live happier lives, which is more than one can say for most books. Nevertheless, I don’t like it very much, and I’ll tell you why. Some reasons are shared with other Bible-based self-help books. Others are unique to Warren.

Warren says his is not a self-help book.

The Bible says, “Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.” This is not a self-help book. It is about becoming what God created you to be. (p 23)

By the way, don’t go looking for this quote in your Bible (Matthew 16:25). Warren quotes from a number of beginner Bibles. The Message Bible, quoted here, is a highly idiomatic “simplistic translation,” as Wikipedia calls it. I’m not sure this is all bad, for it makes scripture more accessible to some. Still, the reader should be aware.

Revelation

How do you know what God created you to be? The answer depends on God’s revelation (p 24). Trouble is, lots of people aren’t going to have a revelation. Others are going to convince themselves they have, but it will be the wrong one, driven by greed, lust, guilt, or fear. Most will probably choose the socially approved one, the revelation the church deems proper, such as live a Godly life, whatever that means exactly.

Revelation just isn’t an answer, and Warren knows it. His real answer is to look at your skills and talents, and examine the situation God has put you in—that is, your life. Balance the two. Ok, but that’s not terribly helpful.

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Creation science makes sense, but . . . .

Creation science makes sense, but . . . .

Many Christians, and almost all adamant atheists, see creation science as a backdoor to sneaking God into school curricula, and public life generally. Among most educated people, creation science lacks respect. Wikipedia defines creation science as “a pseudoscientific form of . . . creationism, which claims to offer scientific arguments for certain literalist and inerrantist interpretations of the Bible.” But what if we think about creationism more generally, as the claim that mind created the universe? Then it makes perfect sense, especially when you consider the alternatives: that the universe created itself, or that it has existed forever. “Perfect sense” doesn’t mean automatically true. It just means that it rests on a good argument.

The Odds

One argument for creationism is that the conditions under which the universe could form, including planets on which people could live, are so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. Roger Penrose estimates it as 1 in 10 ¹⁰¹²³. That is, 1 in 1 + 23 zeros. It’s a big number. Physicists have estimated that the entire universe contains “only” 10⁸⁰ elementary particles (Moyer, p. 238).*

The only alternative is God, or so some creationists conclude. But that puts it too narrowly. What if instead of God we say “mind”? We’ll see. But couldn’t life have formed itself, lightening setting off a chain reaction in a pre-biotic chemical soup? It’s possible, but again unlikely in the extreme, perhaps impossible. As John Walton wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, “intense laboratory research has failed to produce even one nucleotide (RNA component) under geologically plausible conditions.” Scientists have faced “insuperable problems” in explaining the origin of the information that would need to be present in “the chains of nucleotides required for the RNA world.” RNA is the first genetic molecule capable of reproducing itself.

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Dawkins, Christianity, and the Meaning of Life

Dawkins, Christianity, and the Meaning of Life.* Many readers will be familiar with Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, among other works promoting atheism. Darwinism, argues Dawkins, offers a better explanation of what we observe in the world than does the assumption of a creator God.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. (1995, p 133)

The world is exactly as it appears to be if there were no God and no higher purpose to human life.

The trouble is, the world is also exactly as it appears if there were a creator God and a higher purpose. One doesn’t look at the world as a blind set of facts, and conclude there is no God. Instead, one begins with a general outlook on life, and then chooses the facts that support this view. Unlike so much in life, our religious views are not primarily expressions of early childhood experiences. People seem to choose, and change, their worldviews later in life, often in the late teens or twenties.

Consider the basic questions of life: why are we here, what’s the meaning of our lives, where are we going, what may I hope, what should I do? One does not find these answers in the facts; the facts are interpreted in terms of these questions.

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The psalms aren’t what you think they are

The Psalms aren’t what you think they are.

I set for my task to read all the psalms. I came close, but instead of writing about as many psalms as possible, I’ve chosen a few that seem especially important or challenging.

Some generalizations about the psalms

At first, I decided that there was a modal psalm, an average psalm that said something like this. “Oh, Lord, I am being tormented and mocked by my enemies. Slay them, and I will be thankful and worship you forever.” Not every psalm is a lament and call for retribution, but it is the most common type. Some psalms simply praise the Lord, such as psalm 8. Songs of thanksgiving (for example, psalm 136) and wisdom psalms (for example, psalms 1, 14) are other common types of psalms.

The psalms are diverse, but it’s possible to find a question common to many of them. Do I live for myself and my pleasures, or do I follow the path of God? Psalm 1, which in so many ways sets the scene for the psalms that follow, states the issue clearly.

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked . . . but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.

This is called Torah piety. Torah piety is more than just rule following. It is trust in and loyalty to one’s covenant partner, God.

Covenant or commodity

Every psalm expresses or assumes a covenant between God and humans. Humans agree to worship and obey God, and God agrees to protect and foster humans. Covenantal faith teaches that communion with God, and consequently solidarity with one’s neighbor, who is made in God’s image, constitutes the true goal of human existence. The alternative to communion with God is the endless pursuit of commodities–things that promise to make us safe and happy (Brueggemann, p 319).

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Reinhold Niebuhr and Providential history

Reinhold Niebuhr and Providential history. I’ve changed my mind about Reinhold Niebuhr. He tries but fails to connect Christian realism with Providential history. In other words, he fails to connect Christ’s love commandment (“love your neighbor”) with God’s role in history. So that God might be relevant, Niebuhr draws him into history; but not too close lest God get some of the blame. * It’s a tough balancing act that doesn’t quite work.

History as God

Modern history, says Niebuhr, history since the Enlightenment (eighteenth-century), is not so much about confidence in history as faith in history. Until, that is, history ran into the twentieth-century. Faith in history meant faith in historical progress. God would not redeem us, but history would. Reason would make God unnecessary, as humans became more rational and less nationalistic. Peace and progress would follow.

With the twentieth-century the belief that history is the story of humanity’s increasing reason and freedom came to an abrupt end. World War One, World War Two, the genocide of the Jews and Roma, the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—all involved countries most committed to the hopes of the Enlightenment. If we look at history today, can we honestly say that the period from World-War One through the Holocaust was a mere pause in historical progress? The United Nations Genocide Convention counts twenty-three genocides since the Holocaust.

God and justice

History cannot provide an answer to the meaning of life. But amidst the turmoil of history, God can be found, and his meaning discerned, says Niebuhr.

God makes Himself known. His sovereignty over history is disclosed in specific events and acts which are revelatory of the meaning of the whole process. (loc 793)

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My obsession with Reinhold Niebuhr

My obsession with Reinhold Niebuhr. Sorry dear reader, I just can’t figure out my favorite theologian, so I just keep trying. Eight thoughts, none original:

Pride

Reinhold Niebuhr is a theorist of original sin. Not the Adam and Eve variety, but the sin that comes from human willfulness, what Niebuhr calls pride. Pride is humanity’s refusal to admit its limits, refusing to recognize that the individual is not the source of all value, the ultimate answer to every question. Humans usurp the place of God by raising their contingent existence and achievements to unconditioned significance. Pride stems from our anxiety at being at the mercy of the caprice of the world. Pride is Niebuhr’s version of original sin, what he calls the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith (N&D, 167-177, 186-207).

Sensuality. There’s another type of pride, important to Niebuhr, but to which he pays less attention. He calls it “sensuality,” an odd choice of word. In addition to pride, humans often seek to escape their limits and vulnerability by retreating from themselves into sensation. It is an escape from freedom, and ultimately from the self. In practice sensuality is the absence of responsibility, and absorption in the self and its little pleasures. Pride is the attempt to deny human limits. Sensuality is opposite, the denial of transcendence (N&D, pp 179, 232).

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The Price of a Peaceable Kingdom

The Peaceable Kingdom is a book by Stanley Hauerwas. In 2001 Time Magazine named him “America’s best theologian.” It’s been a few years, but it’s surprising how few people not involved in theological ethics know anything about his work.

Hauerwas is from Texas, the son of a bricklayer, and a bricklayer himself when he was young. He makes a point of that in his memoir, Hannah’s Child. The idea is that he’s down to earth, not like all these fancy theologians from Germany.

To be the church

“The first social task of the church is to be the church.” (Peaceable, loc 236) One of his best-known sayings, I’ve never been quite clear what it means. I think it means that the church should care for the souls of its congregation first. Church members should practice non-violence, because they themselves are not pure. Christians should exemplify “cells of joy” in a world that barely knows the meaning of the word. More on this later.

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What I’ve learned from posting 110 posts on my godblog*

1. I’ve come to think about the Bible as symbolically dense stories about what it means to be one small, vulnerable human on this earth for a little while. It means that I am part of a larger story about what it is to live out the promise of the crucifixion and the cross. The promise is that one day the world will end, and we, and with it all our suffering and loss, will be redeemed (parousia). Trouble is, I’m not always sure what these words mean.

Albert Camus says that the absurd is born of the confrontation between human need and the “unreasonable silence of the world.” I would say that Christianity (indeed all religion) is a conversation to fill that silence, still our angst, and so create meaning for our lives. That we make the meaning we subsequently discover is fine, as long as we don’t think that it explains more than it does. It doesn’t explain the mystery and wonder that is every human life.

2. The ethics of Jesus Christ are the right ethics: love, humility, care for the widow, orphan, and stranger. These represent the downtrodden of today, such as the mother who can’t pay her rent and feed her children at the same time.

For forty years I taught ancient political theory, particularly Plato and Aristotle. I learned a lot, but I learned almost nothing about the ethics of love and care, the Judeo-Christian ethic. Love and care were simply not Greek and Roman virtues, though friendship was. Without the Judeo-Christian tradition, Western civilization would be bereft.

Jefferson’s Bible abstracts the ethical teachings of Jesus from its religious context. Trouble is, that leaves open the question of “why?”, as in “why should I care about anybody but myself and my family?” People don’t often say it so bluntly, but many people act as if this is what they believe. Christianity has a good answer. In loving others, we rehearse the love of God, who sacrificed his son so that we might live.

3. God is essential so that we do not become idolaters. It’s really that simple. The only alternative to God is idolatry: of money, sex, power, self, the great leader, or whatever. Václav Havel had it just right.

The relativization of all moral norms, the crisis of authority, the reduction of life to the pursuit of immediate material gain without regard for its general consequences . . . do not originate in democracy but in that which modern man has lost: his transcendental anchor, and along with it the only genuine source of his responsibility and self-respect . . . . Given its fatal incorrigibility, humanity probably will have to go through many more Rwandas and Chernobyls before it understands how unbelievably shortsighted a human being can be who has forgotten that he is not God.

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