38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book set me free....., June 1, 2008
This review is from: The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For? (Hardcover)
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.
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82 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best so far, January 9, 2007
This review is from: The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For? (Hardcover)
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.
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79 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quirky and Intelligent, October 29, 2006
This review is from: The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For? (Hardcover)
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.
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