This BC professor clearly doesn't understand surfing, or Rick Warren.

To explain Rick Warren more clearly, I think we can use a secular, liberal example: the idea that almost everything can be boiled down to sociology. Multitudinous scholars search for demographic and economic figures to explain the actions of Lincoln, Washington, Napolean, etc. The idea is that these 'great men' were simply riding waves of the times. Sociology is looked at as the deterministic force that created the times, created the men, and made them inevitable.

Of course, there has been a long lasting and widely recognized tension between the 'great men make the times' and 'great times make the men.' One might argue that God would be a factor in this... but that most of the people in that debate don't believe that God exists or has any impact on the process. Still, in that whole debate, nobody is arguing that Lincoln didn't spend sleepless nights or work hard on determining policy. The question is the degree to which he changed the outcome of the Civil War by his efforts. The question raised is both: if Lincoln didn't do it, would someone else have? And would they have done the same job, roughly?

Enter Rick Warren. He is conducting the same debate, roughly speaking. He never suggests that a person shouldn't strive, work, or any of that. Surfing is hard, hard play. Waves provide the power, but the surfer has to practice and sometimes gets swept under. In this sense, the columnist seems to get Warren wrong. Further, the columnist fails to see the formal equivalence between Warren and the people who claim sociology as a deterministic force - actually, one more potent, more impersonal, and less forgiving than Warren's description of God. However, I infer that the columnist would have no problem taking these social thinkers seriously, without a whiff of hypocrisy about their own work.

Why would someone use the pretense of intellectualism in order to proclaim that they believe in magic? You're a strange bird Benny.

I agree with BenK. Because this is Slate, I knew that there would be no way that Rick Warren would get a positive review. I also figured that the author would not at all understand Warren's message. How many people here have actually read The Purpose Driven Life? As a liberal (and also a Christian), I'm not surprised that so many other liberals sneer at Christians and Christianity. Its what "we" do, right? Say that we're all open minded, tolerant, accepting, but it seems like that all stops when it comes to Christians.

quinn941:

I agree with BenK. Because this is Slate, I knew that there would be no way that Rick Warren would get a positive review.

Gee, I thought it was a pretty even handed review, it even made me think it would be an interesting read and I'm not one to read that type of thing.

To me, it is pointless whether god created that wave. I know the wave exists and I find plenty of purpose in trying to ride it, wipe outs and all. I can study waves and understand how they change with weather, tide, and so on. I find hope and aspiration when watching The Big Kahuna ride the big one, thinking, "that could be me one day." So when a Rick Warren comes along and says I can only have purpose through JC, I can only respond, well, maybe that is true for you, but it certainly is not true for me. Is that tolerant enough?

Oh, and by the way, cheer up. Intolerance doesn't stop with Christians.

Yah, I am sick and tired of those doggone dogmatic, intolerant Zoroastrians ;- ).

Oh I know intolerance doesn't stop with Christians. Most liberals really only play lip-service to being tolerant of anyone that isn't a white male. As a black woman, I know this. But, for the sake of this discussion, I choose to focus my arguments elsewhere. Certain members of society are always telling other certain members of that same society to "cheer up," not knowing how insulting or unfunny it is to be told that (even if said sarcastically).