The Purpose Driven Life

In 7 Ways to a Wonderful Life available FREE at our website http://anamcaraexperience.org/ I write about one of the ways as being the way of purpose.

As one who is a Believer in Exile I am drawn to the writings of Rick Warren who wrote the 30 million world wide bestseller entiteld "The Purpose Driven Life - What on Earth am I here for?" This is a great title and a great question.

One of the key aspects of Rick Warren's invitation to a Purpose Driven Life is the idea that God has a plan for each of us. He begins the chapter "You are not an Accident" with two quotes. These are

"I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born." - Isiah 44.2a and

"God doesn`t play dice." - Albert Einstien.

Firstly, if God has a plan for you then it has to be understood that this plan has a time line and a time limit. Otherwise it would not be a plan. A plan by definition means something to be completed and must therefore have a time limit.

If you didn`t have a time limit then the plan would go on forever and thus not fall within the limits we identify as a plan. Thus because God is beyond time and yet manifests within time we can`t really say that God sat and individually planned it that way.

A plan is something that tends to be linear. it begins and it ends thus it cannot be of the mind of God which has no beginning or ending.

The idea of God having a plan for your life is very comforting for many people. It invites a purpose even if you don`t. It suggest that God cares and taht you were in the care of God even before you were born. This is an idea that 30 million people feel drawn to examine. It is an idea that will comfort believers who think that God is some mythic being who to quote from "The Purpose Driven Life"

Everyday was recorded in your book.

Thus one is given the idea that God literally has a book with your name on it with an individual plan that is predetermined by your Creator from birth to death. Is this really the why you are here. If it is then were is your free will in all this. For this writer this is simply pouring old wine into new wineskins.

A Creator God is not a planner. A Creator God is Love. Love is not separate from who you are. Love does not plan. Love dances. It dances forever. It isn`t something that ends. It expands. The dance has a structure like music but within the dance and within the music is the intention to become the dance and become the music. You don`t become the dance through planning. You become the dance through surrender. You dance out of time not deeper into the plan which is connected to the idea that you are separate from God.

The dream of the one separate from Love is that God has a plan and a purpose for their lives. This pupose is realised within what Jesus of Nazareth called Life. It isn`t some nice idea of God writing your life script and caring about you. It is a more radical realisation that Life and Love and God and you are not separate. To suggest that there is a plan is to suggest separteness.

Sinner YES or NO

When I was young I was advised by those in authority that I was what was called, " a sinner." My heart and my head rebelled. Along with this revelation (if that is what it could be called) was the implicit idea that I ought to feel somehow wrong and should feel guilty about this fact.

Fourty five years later do I still feel this way. The answer is a very definite, "No I do not." If you were to ask me, "Are you a sinner Tony?" the answer would be "Yes I am and no I am not." In order to understand this pardoxical answer you would need to know my personal definition of what the word sin means.

To say you are a sinner is to say that you feel separate. There is no need for you to feel guilty about this. You belong to a collective called humanity. This is a fact. Human beings think themselves as being in a body that is born, lives in time and space and then comes to an end when the body dies. This for most people is not something they doubt or even ever question. This, however, is what is sin. In this respect, you are a sinner just as I am a sinner.

I don`t feel guilty about this. For me it is a fact of living on this planet. Except that I long for more. I have a holy longing to feel beyond this sense of separateness which makes me feel distant from that source of Love given many names. One of which is God. This is in no way some kind of punishment. It is the evolution of consiousness in form.

To move beyond being a sinner one atones. One becomes AT ONE MENT.

This is a spiritual experience that Jesus Christ invites one into here and now. It isn`t intended that you feel guilty. It is intended that you claim your birthright of joy. You don`t do this through beating yourself up in anyway. This only adds to the sense of separateness that you feel you already are. Guilt will not take you into the higher reaches of consiousness. It will lock the door to the Kingdom that Jesus Christ invites you into living, not when you die, but right now.