Day 40: The end or just the beginning?

The Day 40 chapter of The Purpose Driven Life recommends you take some time to prepare a Life Purpose Statement, in which you write your own commitment to the five purposes. I feel I have a bit more work to do before I can truly commit to each purpose but I will say I found the book a worthwhile read.  It has highlighted to me the absence of opportunities to learn a good moral code in general life and now, when I watch TV (which is where I think a lot of people learn their "morals" from), I can't help but notice how it promotes negative behaviours by always showing a positive outcome when people do the wrong thing.

It reminds me of something a friend of mine told me years ago.  He was friends with a journalist who wrote a column in The Age newspaper's Good Weekend magazine. The column presented three people's experiences in relation to a different topic each week.  The journalist was trying to find three people to present different viewpoints on infidelity.  He had found someone who had been unfaithful and their relationship had ended. He had found someone who's partner had been unfaithful and their relationship had ended.  For the third person, he was looking for someone who had been unfaithful, but who's relationship had survived.  He couldn't find anyone. Yet many TV shows had relationships surviving infidelity like its just another issue that people have to deal with in life (I'm thinking of Californication and The Sopranos as examples).

But I digress, as I said in yesterday's post, I'm feeling quite overwhelmed by all the requirements of this book.  However, at the end of "40" days (or 61 actual calendar days) I am more interested in learning about the bible and have downloaded the one year bible reading plan from The Purpose Drive Life website. I have also ran out of excuses and will be starting back at church this Sunday 2 May 2010.  (Now that I've written that, I have to do it).

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For those of you who have read through all my posts, you may recall that I undertook a "wellness" test back on Day 8, as a benchmark to see whether following the five purposes would improve my life. Back then, I got a score of 772 and having just redone the test, I got the exact same score of 772. I'm not sure that it proves anything except that I should start exercising.

Day 39: Balance

Having read 38 chapters of The Purpose Driven Life, I was becoming inceasingly overwhelmed at everything we are supposed to do.  So I was quite encouraged when I saw the title for Day 39 "Balancing Your Life".  Unfortunately, this chapter sets out a bunch of more things to do to keep you on track with all the other things you need to do:

• talk things through with a partner or group
• give yourself regular spiritual check-ups
• keep a journal
• pass on your knowledge to others

Its all too much.

Day 38: Being World Class ...

... a world class Christian that is.

The Day 38 chapter of The Purpose Driven Life is about reaching out to non-believers all over the world. You can start doing this by praying for countries or by going on a short term mission.  I had not heard of short term missions before reading this book, but basically, instead of spending your holidays at the beach or whatever, you can go on a mission and help people overseas.

With a 5-month old baby, I'm not about to jump on a plane.  However, I somehow think that going on a mission to help the people in earthquake devastated Chile would be more rewarding than going to Florence and spending 3 hours in a queue to get into each art gallery.

Day 37: Testify!

In the Day 37 chapter of The Purpose Driven Life we learn that we are to share our life messages with others because God speaks to the world threw His believers.  There are four parts to your life message:

1. Your testimony about how Jesus has made a difference in your life. 
2. What life lessons you have learnt.
3. Your godly passion - God gives us passions to do what he wants done in the world.
4. The "Good News" that Jesus died for our sins so we may have eternal life.

Rick Warren writes in this chapter "You may feel you don't have anything to share, but that's the Devil trying to keep you silent."  In that case, the Devil is in my ear today because I cannot think of a "night-and-day difference" that Jesus made for me, when I try to think of what lessons life has taught me I find myself questioning my viewpoint,  I don't feel I have a Godly passion, and I still don't understand the logic of having Jesus crucified and thereby wiping out everyone else's sin.

Perhaps those reading this could share their life message in the comments.

Day 36: Purpose 5 of 5 - On a Mission

The Day 36 chapter of The Purpose Driven Life introduces the final purpose - to convert non-believers and save them from eternal damnation.

I have issues with this because it immediately reminds me of annoying encounters with people from the Church of Christ when I was at university.  You would be going about your day and out of the blue be approached by some over zealous person with no respect for your privacy.  I'm sure they considered my salvation more important than anything else I had to do that day, but I don't know of anyone who started attending church because of them.  I do know at lot of people who were very pissed off with them, and their approach no doubt created a number of firm atheists.

Rick Warren writes "You are the only Christian some people will ever know, and your mission is to share Jesus with them." Given that I live in a country that grants public holidays for Christmas and Easter, and while there are other public holidays, it is only the Christmas and Easter public holidays that are fully observed - that is, the shops are open on the other public holidays but not Christmas and Easter - given this, I find it hard to believe that I am the only Christian some people will ever know.

Having said all that, I note that Rick Warren also warns against being distracted by Satan and I wonder whether I have been distracted by Satan (for anyone paying attention, you will note that this 40 day exercise has already taken more than 40 days) or just overwhelmed.

I was listening to a report on an atheist conference recently and one of the speakers made the point that in every other field of study other than theology, things can be learnt from emperical observations. That is, you can't perform an experiment and witness the results first hand in theology, it is just reading things written by other theologists.  This concept did distract me for a while but eventually I realised that there is a way to perform emperical tests - by keeping a prayer log.  This is just a list of the things you have asked God for, the date you made the request and the date it was answered.  It might not be as scientific as, say, dropping two objects of different weights and seeing them fall to the ground at the same time, but it is a start.  This thought came to me after I took a recommendation from an earlier chapter of The Purpose Driven Life, which is to pray for protection from Satan.

I will not be stopping people on the street to tell them about Jesus, or inviting non-believers to come to church with me (particularly as I haven't actually started back at church yet), but I am happy to write this blog because people can choose not to read it if they don't want to.  Alternatively, if someone does read this blog and decides to convert to Christianity - all the better.

Day 35: Weakness

The Day 35 chapter of The Purpose Driven Life discusses our weaknesses.  I think the point of the chapter is that you should not worry about your weaknesses because God can overcome them. It also makes a number of interesting points, such as admitting your weaknesses to yourself makes you more forgiving of weaknesses in others, while admitting your weaknesses to others will build stronger relationships with them.

I recently saw an interview with Alicia Keys in which she said she prays before every performance and sings for the glory of God.  I have her first album (which I have not listened to for some time) but I can't recall her singing making me think about God. I just thought she was a good singer.  That's how it is when people are good at things, you may be impressed by them, but you won't necessarily be impressed by God as a result.  However, when people overcome their weaknesses they tend to openly thank God, so even if it does not occur to others at first, the message still gets through.

Day 34: What we think we become*

The Day 34 chapter of The Purpose Driven Life sets out five ways that servants think:

1. Servants spend more time thinking of others than they do thinking about themselves.  
2. Servants think like stewards, not owners - that is, they know everything, including their time, belongs to God.
3. Servants think about their work, not what others are doing - they don't compare, critcise or compete with others.
4. Servants have nothing to prove - because they know they are loved and accepted by God, they willingly accept jobs that insecure people would consider beneath them.
5. Servants think of ministry (ie serving others) as an opportunity, not an obligation - "because they love the Lord, they know serving is the highest use of life, and they know God has promised a reward".

When I first read this chapter I had difficulties with it.  At the age of 29, I resigned from the worst job in the world and had a bit of a mid-life crisis.  All my life I had done everything you are supposed to do, got good marks at school, gone to university and completed both an undergraduate and masters degree, worked hard in the jobs I'd held and here I was turning 30, single, unemployed, moving back in with my parents because I had no money and feeling miserable.  So when I first read the chapter I thought "well I did all that and it got me no-where".

When I told my husband I was having trouble with "thinking like a servant", he said, "but you are a servant every day to our daughter" (she is five months old).  I again looked over the five ways servants think had to admit it, when it comes to my daughter it was true. Then I thought more about spending 29 years of my life doing "everything you are supposed to do" and realised I had not done it for God or for anyone else, I had done it because I wanted a good life. Even if I had worked long hours for others, ultimately, I had done it for me and in doing so had broken the second commandment and made an idol of success.

After I had moved back home to my parents (from Sydney to Melbourne) I caught up with a friend of mine, who asked me whether I had learnt any big lesson from the whole experience.  I told her no, it was just all crap.  Maybe it has taken 10 years for me to work out what the lesson was.
 
* The title is a quote by Buddha.