Hi xxx,

    I have not read that book [The Purpose Driven Life] but I have heard of it and have read or listened to several things that Rick Warren has said. He seems like a nice enough human being just like very many other people who seem also to share similar views of life and, more to the point perhaps, similar views on what they believe about "God." I put that word in quotes because there are so many different ideas in different cultures around the world, and of course even between neighbors and friends, concerning what might also be referred to as "Ultimate Reality" or maybe "The Universe" that just saying "God" has little meaning. I was asked once by a co-worker whether I believed in God and so I asked him "What do you mean by 'God'?" He looked at me dumbfounded and stumbled around for something to say and finally he just repeated his question. He apparently assumed that by saying "God" everyone else would not only know that he was referring to the descriptions given in a particular book, in his case it turned out to be the Bible, but he also apparently assumed that the ideas which had accumulated in his mind concerning the nature and activity of "God" were all true and unquestionable ideas because he had read some words in that particular book.

    Everyone's mind works this way about nearly every topic known to man and we tend to see "God" in the same way as a child might imagine a man in a red suit who lives most of the year at the north pole and who will bring them things to make them happy if only they will "be good." Being good of course means whatever their parents or perhaps there own particular experiences have led them to believe will lead to something pleasurable rather than to something painful. Those who have been brought up from childhood in a culture where the Bible is referred to as, and believed to be, the "word of God" can hardly be faulted for turning to it if and when they begin to wonder about the nature of life and why the world seems like such a piss-poor place to live in at times and why at other times everything seems wonderful. Of course those who were brought up, for example, in a culture where Buddha's Dhamapada, or Lao Tsu's Tao te Ching, or the Muslim Quran are more prevalent likewise quite naturally may turn to those writings if and when they similarly begin to wonder about things like "what is the purpose of life" or "how can I find more happiness" or "how can I avoid things that seem to cause me pain."

    The problem is that we tend to look to some external authority to tell us what to do and even what to think. First we quite naturally look to our parents and then perhaps we look to our peers or our teachers or to anyone who says things that have a good sound to them even though we may know next to nothing about what is actually being said and even less about the supposed things the words are referring to. So, in our cultural surrounding, we have heard the word "God" and we might readily assume that it must refer to the being or entity that is written about in the Bible. Although the Bible seems to express certain universal ideas about "God" such as that He is all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, etc. (similar ideas to these are also attributed in other cultures to Buddha, Krishna, etc. or to some other "God") yet most of the stories in the Bible describe God as having many characteristics of human beings and depict him as though he were the "King of the World" complete with the desire to be loved and worshipped by the lesser beings he supposedly designed and created for that purpose and, just as with most human kingdoms, God is said to have a set of laws which we are commanded to follow if we want the rewards he holds out for us in the future or else we will be punished. So the Bible is filled with stories of God acting on his own emotions including being driven by his own pleasure, pain, and even desire for things he does not now have. God seems in the Bible to simply be the biggest and most powerful finite human being.

    But if this "Ultimate Being" or, to use the common word, this "God" IS Absolutely Infinite, that is, "without limit" in any way, and if he IS "self-existent", that is his very nature is Eternity Itself, then he cannot be understood to act like a human being (or any other finite being) acts and cannot possibly act for an end purpose (that is for something he does not now have but desires for the future) even though almost anything can be imagined (just look at the latest products of Hollywood.) Understanding the nature of God, although it is very difficult, has nothing to do with blind faith or making the "right choice" between scriptures or any other things external to our own deepest nature. Our own deepest nature is rooted in and an expression of the One Eternal and Infinite Actual God, regardless of where we were raised or what we blindly believe about anything we "see" or "hear" through our own particular senses. Men and Women, and other finite beings, may well (and commonly do) work with purpose toward an end which they desire but an Infinite and Eternal Being cannot possibly act toward an end result otherwise he/it would be lacking in something and therefore finite (limited.)

    One of the key problems with the mind of finite beings, especially human beings with our vast imagination and memory capacity, is that we perceive external things (other bodies) through or own body's senses and memory patterns as though they (and we) exist in both time and space as separate entities, independent of each other. All of our desires and the various things we believe to represent "the purpose of life" are imagined by us to be fulfilled in the future or in some other place. And, therefore, in imagining "God", we believe that he too must be working for a purpose to be fulfilled in the future either "here on earth" or in "some other place." Again, we imagine all things, even God, to be bound by time and space. In Reality, however, and this we can "know even as also we are known", our essential nature, that is to say, God's Nature, is Eternal and Unchanging, just as Jesus discovered and tried to explain to those brought up in the culture in which he too was raised. And of course much of what was written down many years later about what Jesus had said and done reflected only the partial understanding and mostly the imagination of those who had talked about and passed along the story as they heard it from others.

    I notice that Rick Warren expresses the very common notion, among religious and non-religious people alike, that eternity must mean something like "trillions of years" or "endless time." He writes:

"In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity."

    This is what our own imagination tends to present to us and we do not usually question the idea of God offering future reward or punishment at all. The things of life seem to be a mixture of both good and bad now and so we can only imagine "all good" as either past or future while actually the Infinite and Eternal Good is not something that can be given or withheld at all and has nothing to do with time or place which are just part of our own imagination and memory patterns. The problem that I and others have with the depiction of God's nature as presented in the Bible is that it is too weak and limited. It goes no further than making God out to be merely an amplification of finite human nature. In fact there does not seem to be much difference between "God" and Santa Clause at least with regard to future reward and punishment for given behavior now.

    God is Infinitely More Wonderful than all the ordinary desires of finite beings and yet, far from God being remote and unknowable, as the Bible expresses it, we, by our very nature, do not and cannot exist apart from God and we can know God only to the extent that we know and understand our own nature "from the inside." God, and God's so-called reward, are already, and always have been, "at hand", not strung out over time and place such that we have to wait for something to take place in the future either "here" or "there." If we actually come to Understand what Jesus and others were talking about we will then know directly, not through words and images, which are products of our senses and memory, that our own Essential Nature, as well as that of all other finite beings, is rooted in and an expression of One Infinite, Eternal and Unchanging Being regardless of whether one has ever heard of the Bible or of Jesus at all.

    There are lots of people in the world hoping for a better future but many of them, especially those who believe that they somehow stumbled on to the "right interpretation" of the Bible or of the Quran, are acting as though the Earth is a lost cause and are doing things like denigrating or even demonizing science and reason and in this way they are actually hastening the demise of humans and others living here.

    As long as things appear to us as constrained by time and space then of course we will hope for a better future. But we must then hope and work in the "here and now" towards a better future and work with what we have on this our home planet and stop trying to live in the future no matter how wonderful we might imagine it will be.