RICK WARREN’S PURPOSE DRIVEN BEST SELLER.

Because I couldn’t buy what I wanted in a shop the other day I finally got round to reading Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. This is such a religious bestseller it has sold half of Dan Brown’s record making 40 million. According to such evangelical gurus as Billy Graham the book is a spiritual classic. Is it?

It’s certainly a different kind of book, important in its way. It's a sort of Christian alternative to offerings like Deepak Chopra’s How to Know God, which is a super popular work by another Aquarian writing on the edge of the Aquarian era. While I’m too European to be happy with something which so Californianly assures you you will be changed and all in 40 days by reading this course of thought (which you are even meant to sign a covenant to get through! Help!) the book still has significance and it’s worthwhile reading chapters, at random if need be. You really don’t have to read it in any order or over 40 days to obtain something from it.

What it’s got, and for many people invaluably so, is some much needed lessons of spiritual intentionality along with some of the psychology so often lacking in modern religious (especially Christian) texts which can seem old fashioned compared to even some quite silly New Age material which has it. As to a major idea underlying the book Iris Murdoch memorably set out the purely philosophical case for recourse to attention and intentionality in her virtuoso, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals in 1993.


New style spiritual direction for everyone

For too long Christians, (and TPDL is written for believers of all shades within the religion though with an evangelical bias)have seriously lacked the “attitudes” and “purposes” stressed by the book. Faith is not presented as any total psychology cum worldview in the way especially Buddhists would perceive and enact their religion. Christians aren't taught adequate methods of self examination or techniques for coping with difficulties - unless via endless guilt trips or overblown positive thought theories linked to prosperity and work success programmes which the book exceptionally for American religion rejects. Christians mostly don’t have the dimension of contemplative prayer that the book comes close to recommending. What most Christians have is impersonal and random and if the Sunday sermon can’t provide them a few clues to life there aren’t any. This book therefore is practical and overcomes a big gap - even if to the alarm of especially conservative Christians. They dislike what's special about the book, the emphasis on psychology, the ecumenism of approach, the emphasis on special prayers and the alleged lack of emphasis on repentance (surely inevitable in a book not aimed at making converts) and they find the biblical citations strained and translated to suit the author (which is occasionally but not usually the case).

The book does well in some areas, less well in others. The main thing is it tries to give real answers and the attempt has appeal to the many wanting spiritual direction. Of course one must be unhappy with lapses into the kind of near medieval thinking that for example maintains (as some evangelicals do) that any weakness, any sin is Satan himself working directly on you. People who imagine this are often suppressing a hidden egoism (one is so important in the cosmic battle that the devil has to follow you around wherever you go!) and/or giving too much credit to the Prince of Darkness who, while I don’t say he doesn’t exist, isn’t breathing down a person’s neck every time they tell a lie or whatever. The general evil of a fallen world (which isn’t practicing intentionality!) or at worst perhaps the devil’s minions, fallen spirits, can easily enough see to it that evil occurs.

The same overblown belief decides that God has determined everything that has happened to and for you (such as how you look even if it’s ugly) which I think is a serious error to plant in people’s minds and about as fatalistic as bad karma notions in New Age writing. Surely it’s a case that the general laws of a fallen nature prevail but that, as St Paul has it, God is able to bring good out of evil in the long run so to that extent things are in “God’s will” as events which are allowed.

Intention, women and gays

On an everyday basis beliefs that God determines and can cure everything that occurs potentially make for the kind of religious tyrannies in society whose consequences the book’s enthusiasms conveniently disregard in their onrush. It's the kind of position which will declare a woman can’t have an abortion even for incest or rape because somehow God, rather than we, can set the situation to rights in his perfect will. In the same way gays must be reorientated because it’s not possible they were born the way they maintain. (I gather that while Warren has been influential among evangelicals in promoting assistance to gays with AIDS and condemning church failure to get involved at the same time and while declining to call homosexuality “evil” to satisfy the conservatives, he calls it “unnatural”). So, just as I imagined from my rapid reading could be the case, confusion and controversy attaches to the Warren worldview here.

There are anyway contradictions in the book. At one point we’re told not to look within but to look solely to God for guidance for our purposes because “surrender” is of the essence of the religious life (which it doubtless sometimes is, though as Islam means “submission” one cringes at any too easily promoted notions of surrender today). But elsewhere we’re told to follow where our heart goes because where enthusiasm is is where our talents and vocations are likely to be located.

The problem of being individual

The fact is that, amid helpful hints and insights and despite the quasi-militaristic evangelical standards which manage to allow some degree of openness to individualism, the book still keeps considerably close to one-size-fits-all accounts of personality and spirituality that might do for Islam as easily as Christianity. Once again if one is aware of astrology and what it can reveal including about the spiritual life one will be pained by the continuing, unnecessary limitations of this Christian approach at some points. One of the biggest problems for advisers is always why God appears to be speaking to some and others little or not at all. Astrologers know this has something to do with solar and lunar aspects in a natal pattern.

If the sun is strong and well aspected the person is so linked to the unconscious they have little difficulty centring and so hearing or speaking the divine. If the moon is more aspected the divine is mostly or always indirectly conveyed through nature or ritual. If sun or moon are afflicted the messages cannot get through properly or get seriously mixed. Planets like Saturn in the 9th of religion or 12th house of the mystical and unconscious can place serious blocks upon faith and the ability to receive anything. Fortunately Warren affirms that not all apparent absence/silence of God is due to sin. It isn’t; it may well be fundamental lack of gift and may therefore never be dramatically overcome. Spiritual direction has to recognize this and not over promise as Warren sometimes seems to do. However…. If one can take the book with a pinch of salt and see it as a product among other things of certain American organizational attitudes then it is ground breaking and useful in its way.

The Astrology of Rick Warren’s Success and Appeal

Rick Warren is an Aquarian (28th Jan 1954) with Sun and Venus closely conjunct (connection, popularity and financial success) albeit these planets are closely squared by Saturn. However, that means hard work and the self made man (America has sun square Saturn). Jupiter (religion/publishing) is in Warren’s communicating Gemini which helps. But here are the clinchers. Powerful Pluto the God planet at 24 Leo is fortunately trining to the exact degree the destiny reputation Midheaven of the chart of Christianity while the fated nodes closely conjunct Pentecost’s Neptune. And Warren’s own Neptune is powerfully stationary opposite the Venus of the Pentecost pattern, Venus being at once its most elevated planet and ruler of its fourth of endings. I suspect some Christians if they accepted astrology might say that Warren’s role is to supply the church its wake-up call and preparation manual for its last Pentecost.

Apparently this bestseller was launched some time in September 02. That’s likely to be correct. Both as a publishing event and as something promoting purpose and meaning we look to Jupiter. It was in Leo (right opposite the author’s natal Sun/Venus and opposite Neptune in the skies at the time, a big money, bestseller promise!) so not surprisingly with this Jupiter “meaning” and “purpose” comes Leo style big time and perhaps with a touch of the egoism I mentioned which is determined to make everything important, dramatically. But beyond this we see that Saturn was opposite and Uranus (in Warren’s own sign of Aquarius) in opportunity sextile to the Galactic Centre – events in religion. And surely just this describes the book. It’s an event, in some respects a conservative (Saturn) one but in some ways a very modern, groundbreaking (Uranus) one. The combination can be challenging and classic. I fancy that sun in Virgo adds to the practical quality of the work. But the real clincher was the Uranus in Aquarius of September 02. It was opposite the moon conjunct Church of Pentecost. Due to affect millions in many countries TPDL emerged as a shock/challenge to the worldwide Church

This then is a book as a bit of an Aquarian shock and surprise - like Warren himself. I need hardly state that I just had to buy it by accident, un - intentionally you might say, with Venus conjunct his Sun/Venus in Aquarius. Ah well…. one day the Christians may believe me.

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