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.
Not only must we keep vigil over the growth of our own God seed, our eternal spark, but we are the keepers of divinity in all others as well. This is why we cry when terrible disasters crush cities and demolishes villages of God’s children. We were supposed to be keeping watch. We are our brother’s keeper. We must shine in the manner of God’s benevolence through all obstacles and reversals.
Our ability to heal and comfort others in this life depends on our own condition. We cannot feed others if all we grow is weeds, chaff or ornamentals. In order to fulfill our destiny and obligation to serve God we must first nurture the God seed we carry within; shower it with nourishing waters, warm it with gentle fire, ground it in safe, clean soil, and give it space and air to flourish. We are our only gift to God our only opportunity to Give something back to God for everything we are granted – from food and clothing to abundant nature and art – what else is there for us to give back but the gifts of our own soul’s work.
If the world is an oyster then we are the pearls. Our experiences then are the grit burnishing us into perfect gifts, gifts worthy of their makers toil, and worthy of the embrace with which the receiver will cherish each gift, each different soul. Don’t be fooled into thinking we can understand the criteria the creator judges a pearl by. Lopsided pearls could be embraced for their very imbalance. Oddly colored pearls cherished with the same ferocious awe as the seemingly uniform.
Each individuality, each self-created offering is acknowledged by the beloved receiver, God, with divine magnanimity, an all-encompassing acceptance, a consummation of the universal yearning for union of the soul’s pearl with its ultimate creator. We are living embodiments of the divine nature. We are the result of seeds planted. A spark of the eternal peace was cast into the soil of our physical being to flower, fruit, or grow as we must. The very sustenance of the universal center of God depends on the fruit of our labors. Our sins, if they could be called such, consist of the deflection of experience, the refusal to acknowledge and integrate, to see, feel and ultimately understand the purpose of random events, characters, stories and experiences.
Have you never been grateful that you were running late, that you missed that bus, got caught by that chatty neighbor, or overslept that once? At least once in our lives we are able to see when our own will is overpowered by the will of God for our benefit. You find out later that that bus you missed got trapped in a tunnel, or that the neighbor who made you late just discovered something tragic and needed the reassurance of human contact to get through. That time you overslept you came up with an ingenious solution to a difficult work situation upon waking.
These are the tip of the iceberg, the undeniable instances that poke up out of the shroud of divine mystery. Do you take as much care with yourself as God does? Are these instances happenstance or mere fairy tales we tell ourselves to make it through the cold dark night of the soul? To waste time searching for answers to such questions is the devil in the details, the distraction from the greater divine, seeing only one tree rather than the forest. What happened happened – how one chooses to frame the experience becomes a personal mythology, our individual story.
Why do we tell stories? In order to give our experience to another, to share, to integrate, validate and acknowledge our reactions to experience. Experience or rather our reaction to experience our story of the scene is the shaper of our character, the texture of our pearl. Through communication this story, our experience touches another. A reverberation, a sub-particle physics communion of neurological chemicals happens between the hearer and the teller, the writer and the reader. Every possible facet of communication is no more than a call and response system of signs, a cryptology evolved from our far back ancestors.
We beat our spear shafts on the naked earth. We beat our chests and bare our teeth before we began to understand what we are. We developed language, created signs for remembering the words, wrote books by the millions, and spend much of our resources on the ability to communicate immediately, this e-mail attachment, that pop-up ad. Man has mastered the manipulation of advanced technology but doesn’t even know what he is. In this time of great shifting, this era, this phase of human evolution depends on each individual’s ability to buff the soul lustrous, to create in ourselves a gift worthy of the generous spirit in which we are formed.
Surprisingly, to do so effectively we need to forget these esoteric aspirations, to plant them deep within our perception but to focus on the fleeting moments of our precious time. Not just to gather rosebuds while we may but to, weed the garden, protect the food and flowers from deterioration, meal the corn and bake for the children. The most singular means of buffing our soul is as accessible as our own nose, as simple as a nervous twitch.
The easiest and paradoxically most difficult task of humans on earth is to interact constantly with grace and compassion for all humankind. This is something one can do while waiting in the slow line at the grocery checkout. This can happen as fast as a deep breath before blasting the ear at the other end of the support hotline with fetid rage. This is the holy instant, the second of transformation from being only human to behaving as divine. Even if we are still floundering to discover the ultimate key to our overall mission on earth, we can always be benevolent to another of God’s fallible soul seeds. It takes less than a second to smile. It’s not the mechanic’s fault the transmission blew.
Maintaining the capacity for this kind of consistent compassion ultimately depends on the stories one tells oneself about the nature of their surroundings and the values of their experiences. In order to sincerely offer generosity and acceptance in even the smallest of our interactions we must tell ourselves stories, rationalize the need for such difficult personal expectations. The wrong kind of personal story or internal mythology sets us up for immediate failure.
I have been exploited before therefore every encounter is another chance to act a defense against further exploitation. I have been ignored before therefore every encounter is an opportunity to prove my existence, no matter how abrasive I must be to get notice. That’s why I can overcome any limitations I find in the structure of this book. This book has the ability to assist the fallible soul in rewriting the subliminal stories, the unconscious motivations that put us in opposition with God’s love and will.
Any tool that can help even one soul to stay aligned with his or her divine purpose is worthy of celebration. Every useful soul uplifts us all. Every healed spirit heals us all. Every God minded action takes us all closer to union with the true glory of God.
