I found this book very complicated.. if you'll gonna read this for consecutive days. Without a doubt, it will. But everyday of reading it is worth the effort and time. A lot of scriptures can be found and you'll be more aware of Godly realities of life. You only need forty days to finish the book. With 40 chapters, honestly, I haven't finished it yet. I just can't wait to rate and jot some review on it.

Was a good book despite the religiosity of it turning me off at times.

Some really good things to think about. Good message overall and helps point you in the right direction.

This book offers a transformative journey to help readers discover their true selves and understand their purpose in life. Each day, it presents a small, insightful message along with scripture to memorize, helping you keep track of your path to finding your purpose. Some lessons are challenging, prompting you to face questions you've perhaps avoided for years.

I completed this journey with a sense of accomplishment and I would highly recommend this book as a comprehensive, helpful, and inspiring guide dealing with many of the issues Christians struggle with today. It is structured into subsections that address key aspects of purpose, facilitating a deeper understanding. It served as a reminder of where my hope and purpose truly lie, realigning my perspective with Christ’s intentions. There's nothing more important than living according to God's plan.

So much of evangelical Christianity has been tainted by Biblical literalism. A literal reading of the Bible has many contradictions. For instance: Jesus was both baptized by John the Baptist and John the Baptist was already in prison in another gospel. There are many more, but I won’t list them. To quote Chris Hedges: “we took the Bible seriously and therefore we could not take it literally.”

Rick Warren deems the Bible a user’s manual to life, and his book the supplementary guide to interacting with it. The circular logic that the Bible is the literal word of God because within it, it says so. The problem being, many others have proclaimed themselves speaking for God, and better yet, the Bible has been weeded through several times for canon and non-canon. It’s also been translated hundreds of times. My point being, is even if somewhere within the Bible there is the word of God, the likelihood that it is the whole thing, wrung through so many times by human hands is idolatrous.

However, this literalism is not uncommon, especially among American Christians. Warren’s addition to the mix is a particularly self-help type of vaguery that I can’t help but think is purposefully done by him or the editor for wider appeal. If the word can be interpreted so literally, this is a strange thing to do. Purpose #3 is “Be More ChristLike” or something like that, and he defines Christ-like in one line over 6 chapters. Everything else is essentially how to build character. He makes no mention of the sermon on the mount where Christ gives his only actual sermon, laying out his actual radical vision for how to live. But that is exactly why, right? It’s radical. Christ was a radical that would be castigated to the fringe in today’s society, so like in other places he has been whitewashed and cast aside for a simpler, sanitized version.

The other problem with Warren’s take is the emphasis on complete surrender. Interestingly, this is an oft-derided characteristic of Islam I hear about from conservatives. The reason, I had always assumed, was that someone ready to “surrender” was prone to authoritarian power. I can’t speak to Islam, but I can speak to this. If hear me out on the idea that we cannot take the entirety of the Bible as God-breathed and literally true, then we can acknowledge some as incorrect. When we acknowledge some as incorrect, we can then say some might be harmful. Historically, this has been true, as biblical passages have justified everything from slavery, Naziism, and Stalinism. That leaves the preachers to tell us what to do, and if they take the word literally, it’s not much different. If they don’t, then they can use it manipulatively, or even to dangerous ends, even fascistic ones. Lastly, there’s our own head, and I don’t believe we should ever surrender completely to our own head either, as it would be impossible to differentiate between the inner-workings of your brain and the Holy Spirit. You have to use your cognition and conscience/Holy Spirit as a starting point, but be able to make conscious decisions based on the morality you have hopefully gained from the word of Christ. Never should you completely surrender to the forces in your head, lest you be taken in by the worst of your impulses. Therefore, unless God can directly speak to you, this is disastrous advice.

It does, however, explain a few of the political realities of our day. The people reading A Purpose Driven obviously have a little desire to have a little of the control taken away from them. A bit of the authoritarian impulse, if you will. That, combined with the natural human disposition to not be able to empathize with people who are different, and Warren over and over prioritizing “believers” over non-believers as people you should care about can create bad situations where we have celebrity Christians rabble rousing for war and inhumane policy.

Jesus, in his reality, was a pretty radical guy, though. Rick Warren finds it convenient to gloss over the hard truth that he probably wouldn’t have thought it sufficient to give away “most” of his multi-million dollar fortune. He finds it convenient not to mention that he says “do not return evil with evil”, or “turn the other cheek”. “If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them”. It’s this kind of thing that Warren neglects to mention because it’s the difficult stuff that most Christians find impossible to do in modern reality. The thing is, it wasn’t as if it was easy to do in 1BC either.

My dad recommended me this book, and he’s a good guy. If he said he got a lot out of it, I’m sure he did. But if he wasn’t already a good guy with a heart of gold, he might have just been more mired in a dangerously grotesque way of selfishness. And that’s why I think this book an example of harmful writing.

I really enjoyed the first two weeks of this book.. the last two I felt became repetitive and boring at times.. I read it with my friends.. we all enjoyed the first part.. and stopped talking about it towards the last week and a half.. I also felt like the author continuously tried to sale his other works through out the end of it.. which became annoying

Right now I’m at a cross road in my life and trying to grow more spiritually.. so it was a good time to read this book.. I also think it would of been a good to read whenI started my walk in Christ.. I’ve thought of a few things one way my whole walk.. and this book changed my perspective in a good way..

Although I didn’t agree with everything Warren writes.. it was still a good read I did get some things out of it.. I would definitely suggest reading the Bible more (obviously) but this book makes good points about some things..

I didn't finish it. I didn't like it. I felt like it missed the point. I thought that it was too self-centered instead of God centered and too focused on a method instead of the pure study of God's word. If you want to study about a purpose driven life, study the lives of Joseph, Daniel, Jesus, Paul, etc., and you will learn more than what Rick Warren has to say. I realize this review may be a little on the harsh side, but rest assured, I don't think that those faithful, committed Christians who love this book are heathens. I just don't think it is a book for me.