Friday, November 23, 2012

Book Review: The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren


Why are we here? Men and women have asked this question for years, and will continue to ask it as long as this earth endures. Rick Warren aims to shed some light on this topic in his book, The Purpose Driven Life. He looks to the Bible for answers to this age old question, and seeks to guide readers toward discovering their purpose in this life.
The book is written as a 42 day journey. Each day, the reader studies a short chapter and is given some points and questions to consider at the end of each chapter. Major focuses include, worship, serving God, and developing personal relationships with God and with other believers. He gives guidance for how to determine one’s own unique gifts and abilities so each reader can discover his or her own individual “purpose”.
The expanded tenth anniversary edition includes two new chapters at the end, exploring two “traps” that get in the way of finding one’s purpose. He discusses specifically how these traps derail us and lead us to sin instead of service. Each chapter now has a video introduction and a 40-50 minute lesson, complete with notes, available online. The additional online content is a great accompaniment to the book, in that one can spend about an hour a day reading, studying, and listening.
The Purpose Driven Life is a good book, and a great guide for a Christian in need of some spiritual direction. I highly recommend reading it, but would suggest keeping your Bible close by. The author quotes the Bible extensively, but he jumps around to different translations and paraphrases. I admit I was slightly put off by his use of multiple translations and paraphrases of the Bible. He does so because he says that sometimes a shade of truth might be missed in one translation of a particular verse, or the familiarity of a verse can cause us to skim over it. I think it is dangerous to use a paraphrase in that circumstance, because paraphrases usually present one person’s interpretation of a verse, not the verse itself. The Bible is the Bible, and when looking for a deeper meaning, it is safer to go to one of the original texts and look at the Hebrew it was translated from for meaning or a fresh perspective rather than a paraphrase.
I also noticed that instead of presenting a Bible verse and citing where it came from, he would incorporate the verse into his paragraph using a footnote. In order to know where the verse came from you have to look at one of the Appendices at the end of the book. I understand is makes the book flow well, but one must be careful to see the Bible in its own context. In the form presented, it is too easy to miss out on studying the Word of God, and too easy to rely on the book.
All in all, I enjoyed the book, and the new features are great! I just recommend keeping your Bible nearby and using both!
I received this book for free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions and thoughts I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

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