What’s Odd About ‘The Purpose-Driven Life’

This exceedingly popular American evangelical book does not make sense if you aren’t already evangelical

In 2002, Rick Warren, the founder of an American evangelical megachurch, published The Purpose-Driven Life. Sometimes I like to learn about cultural trends, and this book certainly was one.

This book was also free for me. It happened to be on a bookshelf where I was volunteering at a telephone hotline during an overnight shift in 2007.

I did not expect to like or agree with the book, and in that regard my expectations were fulfilled. On the other hand, I found even less philosophy than I expected. It seemed to me that Warren did not intend this book as philosophy. That made it a little harder to evaluate his claims.

If you’ve heard of The Purpose-Driven Life, which has enjoyed two decades of astonishing popularity, you might be interested to read my impressions of it in this article. I don’t know what the book has meant to other people, but I know how I reacted to it at the time.

What’s In It

The first half of the book assumes the reader believes in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in the Christian version of the Bible. The second half of the book, building on that, goads committed Christians to join churches to strengthen their faith. Readers who want this material may find what they’re looking for.