TBM19: Soul Purpose – Your Corner of God’s Spiritual Kitchen
Picnic in the Alps (C) Image*After
Rick Warren, evangelical preacher and founder of a religious empire built on the bestselling Purpose-Driven books, has stumbled onto an important truth. People want to know why they’re here on Planet Earth. They want to know what their life purpose is.
Warren’s book called The Purpose-Driven Life has apparently sold over 30 million copies.* That’s a lot of people looking for purpose.
I bought the book in 2004, shortly before I flew to Orange County, California, to participate in a Normal Brain Study. While I was there, I decided “what the heck, I’m so close, why not drive over to see Rick Warren’s church?” So I found myself, one weekday morning in December 2004, walking into this humungous building to check out the feel of the place.
My visit to Saddleback Church helped me better understand why I don’t agree with most of Warren’s teachings,** and why I particularly dislike what he says in The Purpose-Driven Life.
The blurb on the back of copy I own says this about the book: “This book will help you understand why you are alive and God’s amazing plan for you — both here and now, and for eternity. Rick Warren will guide you through a personal 40-day spiritual journey that will transform your answer to life’s most important question: What on earth am I here for? Knowing God’s purpose for creating you will reduce your stress, focus your energy, simplify your decisions, give meaning to your life, and, most, important, prepare you for eternity.”
According to Warren, you’ll find all these benefits if you understand you’re here to fulfill five main purposes. You need to know that (#1) you were planned for God’s pleasure; that (#2) you were formed for God’s family; that (#3) you were created to become like Christ; that (#4) you were shaped for serving God; and that (#5) you were made for a mission.
Well, you know, I couldn’t disagree more. This is not a recipe for finding your soul purpose. This is a recipe for finding humility, a recipe for eradicating all knowledge of your core self. This is Paul’s religious recipe, not Jesus’ religious recipe. (You can read more about the differences between these two sets of teachings in the Jesus Redux series of posts.)
Warren, like so many religious teachers, is adamant that you can’t get to know God by focussing on yourself or your own self-actualization: “[Y]ou cannot arrive at your life’s purpose by starting with a focus on yourself. You must begin with God, your Creator. You exist only because God wills that you exist. You were made by God for God — and until you understand that, life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny. Every other path leads to a dead end (page 18).”
See, Warren’s whole argument rests on his assumption that human beings are made by God for God’s pleasure and God’s own purpose. You don’t get a say in this. Once you stop fighting this “truth,” says Warren, you’ll find contentment.
I read this and what I hear is a man telling you to accept your lot in a life as a slave. A slave who is owned by a powerful master. A slave who exists only to serve the needs of his master (i.e. the need for worship and glory). A slave who has no rights of his/her own. A slave who should be grateful to a master who provides air to breathe and food to eat and nothing more. Amen.
Of course, the Bible says this very thing about our relationship with God in many different ways, so it’s not surprising that an evangelical Christian (who believes the Bible is God’s infallible “word”) would conclude that people are empty-vessels-waiting-to-be-filled-up-by-God. After all, this is what the Bible says — both the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament.
According to this traditional Christian view, there’s only one Spiritual Kitchen in the universe, and it belongs exclusively to God. No other kitchens exist. And no other chefs exist, either. There’s only one chef, and he needs a lot of kitchen slaves to bring him the ingredients he needs so he can make his big, fancy souffles.
God is apparently too stupid to make his own eggs and apparently too selfish and vain to share the kitchen with anyone else.
Iain standing on a chair so he can reach the kitchen sink (c) JAT 1988
When my younger son was a toddler, he became fascinated by water — especially running water. Iain would stand on a chair at the kitchen sink while I was preparing meals and play for the longest time with running water from the cold water tap. He had a plastic cup with a handle, and he would hold the cup under the stream of water, fill the cup, pour out the water, then start over again. This would go on for half an hour or more. (He had a long attention span). He seemed to find it both fascinating and soothing.
It was fascinating and soothing for me, too, to see him standing there, so intent on his task, so trusting, so happy.
He was very different from his older brother (a fellow who was born to move). Early on, Iain showed a deep interest in Newtonian physics. He would discover a principle of mechanics, then test it repeatedly. “Fan on, fan off,” he would say aloud as he turned the wall fan on, then off, again and again, using the switch on the lower part of the wall. It’s amazing he didn’t burn out the fan’s motor. On the other hand, two expensive tape decks had to be taken in for repair after he pulled off the tape compartment doors in his quest to understand how the machines worked.
He could run the VCR by the time he was two.
I have little doubt that, had he lived, he would have grown up to be an engineer — maybe electrical, like his grandfather (my dad), who trained as a chemical engineer but worked for an electrical engineering firm for many years. It was there right from the beginning, his true soul talent. Nobody “gave” it to him. He was born that way. He was hardwired from birth to focus on the things in the world that he recognized, that were familiar to him in the essence of his consciousness because of who he is as a child of God.
By the time Iain was born, our house was overflowing with all manner of toy vehicles — “cars and trucks and things that go” (which was also the title of a Richard Scarry book adored by our older son). But wheels weren’t on our younger son’s “soul recognition list.” He had his own list of things to learn about and share with others, things he’d “brought with him,” so to speak, because they’re part of his true soul blueprint.
People speak of the mind’s eye, but I believe we have a heart’s eye, too. In my heart’s eye, I see my little boy standing with me in the kitchen, propped up on a chair because that was the only way he could reach the tap, talking to me, listening to me, sharing his deep love of learning with me, and bringing so much love and joy into my life because he wasn’t afraid to be himself.
Our loving divine parents — God the Mother and God the Father — have a kitchen like this, only it’s really, really big because our divine family is really, really big, and there has to be a spot for everyone. Over in one corner are the kids who love to play with the kitchen pot set, and over there are the kids who have an Easy Bake Oven, and over there are the kids who love to make sticky, gooey messes while they learn, and over there are the older kids — the teens, as it were — who are helping keep an eye on their younger brothers and sisters as they stand beside the stove with Mom and Pop and learn how to safely cook with gas.
This is what our relationship with God feels like to me. This is what our relationship with ourselves feels like to me. So few adults can remember who they were as young children. So few can say with any certainty what they recognized in their early years as their own little corner of the spiritual kitchen. But you have a corner. You have a spot that belongs just to you. It’s the place in God’s creation where you feel both happiest and safest, and, at the same time, most able to give of yourself to others.
When you’re in the right place — not the place your parents tell you, not the place your status-addicted peers tell you, but the place your own soul tells you — you can begin to make a lasting difference in the world.
When you fill your cup with your soul’s own truth — your courage, your gratitude, your devotion, your trust, your forgiveness — you’ll discover you can see these truths and feel these truths and KNOW these truths in others. Including God.
As they say, water seeks its own level.
* Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).
** Naturally I have no quarrel in principle with Warren’s efforts to address worldwide issues of poverty, illness, education, and environmental care. However, I disagree with his suggested methods.
