Customer Reviews

The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For?

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Really, It did. When I started reading this book I was teetering on the edge. For years I had followed the beliefs and practices as promoted by Rick Warren...White North American Evangelicalism. After years of obsessive prayer, bible study, and "worship" with shoddy church music, I was burnt out, unhappy, and hungry for something deeper.

Price, in his paradoxically humble yet arrogant, ferocious, and sardonic style, dismantled the edifice that the Evangelical church had tried to build in my mind. While doing so he also introduced me to some of the teachings of the Stoics, Buddhists, reflections from the venerable Eric Hoffer, author of the "True Believer," and Berger and Luckmann's "The social construction of reality."

Rather than a cut and dry polemic then, Price pulled together a wide variety of religious and philosophical literature and traditions, and used them to interpret, criticize, or contrast the evangelical beliefs of Rick Warren. I find this eclectic and literate polemical style to be very interesting and personally rewarding.

What most reviewers have not pointed out is that this book is Price's reflections on and reactions to each of the 40 chapters found in the Purpose Driven Life. Since Rick Warren revisits the same issues and beliefs in different chapters, Price must return to the same number issues, like the nature of mass movements or the nature of God, for example.

This approach may prove too repetitive for some people, but, for me I found it to be almost meditative. After all, meditation is often derived from the repetition of a thought, chant, or breathing pattern.

Every chapter is short, usually a page or two, and can be read in a matter of minutes. So, again, in a way then, Price's book was almost devotional or meditative for me.

While Price may be harsh at times, his piercing words set me free and pushed me over the edge into a strange new place of existence, far more exciting and fulfilling than my life under the single vision of a protestant denomination. Were it not for Price, I might not have taken that existential plunge.

For that, I am grateful to him; and I encourage people who are questioning their Evangelical faith to read this book. If you don't fall into this group, or don't have much interest in religious criticism, you might want to pass this book up, it probably will not be relevant to you.

I was very excited to find this book. I'm a real fan of Robert M. Price and deeply enjoyed his Bible Geek podcasts. I had been familiar with his name from the Jesus Seminar and have a copy of his book "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man." For those who don't know, earlier in life Price was a born-again Christian. During his years in seminary, and as a Baptist pastor, he eventually became a nonbeliever. Price occupies a somewhat unique niche in that he continues to support and participate in religion in spite of totally abandoning theism and what seems like most of Christian doctrine.

While his other work focuses on biblical scholarship, this book is very pastoral in nature and mainly attempts to bring forward a more mature life philosophy than that presented by Rick Warren in "The Purpose-Driven Life." My experience so far is that people who have read and reread Warren's book have by now awakened to the fact that they are not Southern Baptist fundamentalists. In my opinion, it is prime time for a book like this, but Price's approach falls short in several ways. It might be a better statement to say that "The Reason-Driven Life" is just too large of a leap for most religious people to make. I suspect this book will be enjoyed mostly by those who are already considering a transition to a fully-natural worldview, but are hesitant. Persons who consider themselves "believers in exile" or "the church alumni association" (terms popularized by Bishop John Shelby Spong) will enjoy this book.

Those who have listened to Price before will recognize his sometimes irreverent humor in the text. This is definitely a book with attitude. The problem is that he is so critical of Warren's philosophy, that a good bit of his text comes off sounding like ad hominem attacks. The text is long and follows Warren chapter for chapter. The page counts of the books are approximately the same, but Price's text is denser and, in my opinion, written for somewhat more advanced readers. Several of the later chapters (somewhere in the 30's) I found difficult to follow.

Price does a nice job of demolishing Warren's misuse and misinterpretation of scripture. People involved in small discussion groups will enjoy his humorous insights and tales of Heretic's Anonymous (Chapter 18) and his Ten Commandments for good discussion (Chapter 19). Price has an annoying habit, in my opinion, of paraphrasing people instead of quoting them directly. I love this one: "you have to get rid of fear of damnation to think clearly about faith". I'd love to quote that, but who said it, Price or Kant?

There are some real jewels in this book and I will definitely be reading it again. The book is really designed for discussion groups and each chapter ends with a "Point to Ponder", a "Quote to Remember" and a "Question to Consider". It would be really fun and challenging to be read side-by-side with Warren's book and discussed in a group setting. I'm not expecting to see that happen in Sunday school anytime soon.

Thankfully, someone with a brain had the patience to read The Purpose-Driven Life. I guess it moved Bob Price to eloquence, and his respectful response is this collection of thoughts prompted by Rick Warren's mega-seller. It essentially tells us to avoid joining any church remotely like Warren's stadium church/rock concert cults, because these teach that you shouldn't think for yourself; that you should take Bronze-Age myths literally; and that you should bathe yourself in that lifestyle so there'll be no time in your schedule for reflection or to address the cognitive dissonance that will inevitably arise if you have one neuron left in your skull.

There is some wonderful wisdom here, and Price has plenty of experience in teaching the reader about Bible mythology and the illusion of god. The main problem with this book is that some of the forty mini-chapters that make up this book are fairly boring. In each chapter, Price is addressing a topic from the same chapter in Rick Warren's book. So while these less-engaging chapters are useful in a comparative sense, you may find yourself skimming over a few of these entries.

Price is a treasure, and I heartily recommend this humorous answer to evangelical balderdash.

This is one of the most compelling books I've ever read.

Dr. Price's approach to philosophy puts facts and reasoned thinking above emotional appeals. The book exudes the presupposition that all areas are open to investigation and that meaning is found through truth, not dogma.

While I have the upmost respect for Rick Warren's work with AIDS and other humanitarian efforts, it is long past time to call "The Purpose Driven Life" what it is: Bad Theology. Fundamentalism so rarely gets refuted in this careful and factual manner.

Dr. Price would be justified to stop there, but rather decides to give the reader an alternative philosophy that requires no false presuppositions. With the rock walls of reason and evidence at his back, he gives his post-post-modernist view of the meaning of life.
I loved this book.

Excellent thoughtful book. Price wrote this as a counter to book called The Purpose Driven Life that is apparently a bestseller in the USA. I have no knowledge of that book but found that Price does an excellent job showing that biblical fundamentalism is simply unsustainable. More challenging for me was Price's careful and reasoned argument for the value of insights from religious traditions. Price is intellectually honest and generous but perhaps a little to respectful of Christian tradition. Nevertheless this is an excellent read.

This book really answers the question: "Is it OK not to be a religious whacko". The multitudes of people that have inherited going to church from their parents can break with clear conscience the habit. No longer do you have to sit in church, or feel guilty about skipping, when you are only there to pacify someone else's expectations.

It is the semi-religious moderates that facilitate the whackos. Their kinda-faith creates the space for the nutcase to hide from closer scrutiny. This book is the key to setting the masses of semi-religious moderates free, and also what will expose the fundamentalist whackos for what they really are.

The world is going to be a better place for everyone, and this book will be part of the reason why. Read it!

Pastor Rick Warren's THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE has been a best-seller in Christian circles, and biblical scholar Robert Price's THE REASON-DRIVEN LIFE: WHAT AM I HERE ON EARTH FOR should prove the same. It uses a similar point/counterpoint argument pattern to survey the importance of reason in life's realities, comes from an author who was a born-again Christian in his youth, and provides an offset and counterpart to Warren's scripture-driven analysis, offering a critical approach to Warren's title and offering arguments for the use of reason as a tool for developing moral maturity. Readers interested in philosophy and religion blends, especially those who've already read and deeply considered Pastor Warren's title, will find this survey equally satisfying.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Perhaps Price intended his book to be like a Zen exercise, in which the lesson is the test. The book urges, among other things, that everyone must think for his or herself, applying reason and discernment. Nowhere will this commitment be of greater use than in reading this book itself. Because while some chapters, some sections, absolutely soar with wit and insight and a wonderful openness and humility, others are loaded down with unnecessary sarcasm and criticism. I say this as a committed fan of sarcasm and criticism--I love, for example, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. But in this book, a sort of devotional/exhortation for secularists and freethinkers, I think a more consistently "inspiring" tone could have been more effective. Not that the negative material wasn't correct in most cases--it was. But it intruded unwelcomely on the much stronger positive sections. Lest it sound as though I am damning with faint praise, this is a very good book, worthy of wide readership. It just calls on one to exercise the very discernment throughout the book that is intended as the result of reading it.

A very good rebuttal of "The Purpose Driven Life". A fairly easy read with some humor, but written at an intellectual level that is, for me, sometimes a challenge.

For those of us who use reason and logic as a basis for understanding our world, this is very reinforcing. He has helped me understand that there is a wide body of thinking that supports my own point of view.

As always, the first thing I read were the negative reviews. After reading Price's work, it is obvious that neither (although one freely admits this) actually read the book. Price is a Biblical scholar, not a theologian. He is very open about being a nontheist, refers to himself as a humanist, and sings in his church choir. The reason? Unlike most people, when it comes to the Bible, this guy really knows his stuff! Therefore, Price does not feel the need to 'throw the baby out with the bathwater'. Price loves the Bible, loves going to church, and laughs at those of us who feel like we have to pick a side.

However, this is not what the book is about; it is a critique of the tenets of modern, Christian fundamentalism. First, the idea that the purpose of everyone's life is to worship the god of the Bible! Next, he breaks down the 'us v. them' mentality by addressing the issue of denominations. To paraphrase Price, everyone wouldn't fit under the same roof anyway. After that, he continues on to the myth of the inerrant Bible. This is where Price makes, in my opinion, his most astute observation: the scriptures have been copied, translated, and come from a culture and era that are far removed from our modern world. Therefore, there's no way to avoid interpretation.

Finally, throughout the book, he discusses the downright wishful thinking that is at the heart of fundamentalism and how it stifles the personal growth and maturity that lead one to wisdom - spiritual or otherwise.