The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

Have you heard of it?

It has been on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Imagine that, a Christian religious book on top of the list.

Anyway, I finally got a copy and have started to read it. The final push for me to do this was that my church is having small reading groups meeting during various times throughout the week to discuss it together. I joined up with one and look forward to the time to share our observations about the book.

I think I'll do some book blogging as well.

There is a web page for the book, here.

And if you want to check out what people are saying, go to the Amazon page where reader reviews of the book can be found.

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Okay, so I'll go ahead and blog my impressions as I read. If you have read the book, I'd be curious to hear from you what you think. If you have been thinking about reading it, I'd be curious to know if my observations swayed you one way or the other.

Chapter One is titled, "It All Starts with God."

Warren is straightforward: It's not about you.

I've been taught over the years in my church attendance that self-centeredness is one of the biggest problems facing us. The whole idea that life is me, me, me. We are often driven by self-promotion and self-preservation. Thus, this start is a good reminder of something I know well and struggle with.

Warren related a story about an atheist writer, Andrei Bitov who said:

I was overcome with a dispair so great that life seemed to stop at once, preempting the future entirely, let alone any meaning. Suddenly, all by itself, a phrase appeared: Without God life makes no sense.

To find our purpose in life, we have to go to the Creator.

For those blog readers who don't believe in god, I'd be curious to know, where do you draw your sense of meaning to life?

As for me, I do believe and so that is the starting point.