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BY IRA ZEPP

I've always appreciated the necessary balance of the priestly and prophetic in religion. But the notoriety of Rick Warren's 'Purpose Driven Life' has forced me to deeper reflection.

Acknowledging the stature it has achieved by virtue of its publishing success, the thousands of congregations who have gone through 40 Days of Purpose, and the recent reading of it by (hostage) Ashley Smith to (alleged kidnapper) Brian Nichols, I feel like a lion in a den of Daniels. Yet, I invite you to join with me in thinking a second and third thought about the book.

American Christianity tends to recycle the 'priestly:' Dwight L. Moody, Billy Graham, Fulton J. Sheen, Norman Vincent Peale and now Rick Warren. No one should dismiss how many people have been significantly helped and healed ? literally saved ? by these evangelists.

Their concern for a direct, meaningful relationship with God and a more loving relationship with neighbors is an indispensable part of our religious life. No one in our generation has more effectively and simply outlined the need for, and practice of, these relationships than Warren. He has met a profound need. And to his everlasting credit he embodies that individualistic Christianity in his charity and generosity. His love for God impels him in service to the needy here and abroad. I honor and laud him for that.

But this is only part of the Gospel.

Notwithstanding the first line of his book, 'It is not about you,' there is a disproportionate emphasis throughout the book on the first (and second) person singular?I, me, you, your, my relationship to God. I am impatient for the 'us, we, our relationship to God,' with a prophetic call rooted in God, which goes beyond individual charity and expresses itself in social justice for the neighborhood.

With all the talk about God and servanthood, I did not find the word 'justice' in the book. That's telling.

Of course, we recycle our prophetic voices as well: Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, the Berrigans, Walter Wink, Jim Wallis. I yearn for a study of '40 Days of Justice-Seeking Lives' to level the Gospel's playing field.

Warren tells us he's used more than 1,000 verses from the Bible. If you check his index of verses, you will find less than two dozen verses are from Israel's prophets and virtually none deal with corruption in high places, speaking truth to power or liberating the oppressed, which was the central limitation the prophets found in Israel's priestly tradition.

Of these few verses, Warren refers three times to Jeremiah 29:11: ''For I know the plans I have for you,' says the Lord, ?plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.'' And Jeremiah 17:9 twice: 'The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?'

The remainder of the prophetic passages are primarily from Isaiah and, again, are verses dealing with individual piety and the need for inner purity. I cede this to Warren; this is his primary emphasis.

In contrast, Martin Luther King Jr., speaking on behalf of many oppressed people, could hardly preach a sermon without a reference to Isaiah 1 and 61, Amos 5, Micah 6, Hosea 4 or Jeremiah 7. Jim Wallis challenges the Christian community to see God related to issues of poverty, corporate greed, war and health care. He needs to be heard.

It is one thing to be charitable to the poor by way of soup kitchens and Thanksgiving baskets and quite another to seek justice by erasing the structures which keep people poor and their hands extended.

So, here are some questions for our conversation.

Is the '40 Days of Purpose' a 21st-century version of 20th-century revival meetings and in each case less interested in social reform than 19th century ones?

Although we need the personal nurturing of priests and the social critique of prophets, should we not question seriously any immensely popular version of Christianity when Jesus insists that the real deal is abandoning our ego and taking up the cross and Paul's 'Christ crucified' is a scandal and stumbling block? The sacrifice and discipline implied here probably will not produce best-sellers.

Can we count on the transformation of the world to follow the transformation of individuals? Remember Reinhold Niebuhr's prophetic realism: 'You can't pass a law to change the heart, but you can pass a law to restrain the heartless until his heart is changed?'

Is there some way we can combine love and justice, prayer and politics, the personal and social into the original Christian praxis, a unity of contemplation and action?

Should we spend 40 days with priestly Warren's 'Purpose Drive Life?' Yes, by all means, but not without spending, in the name of the whole Gospel, 40 days with prophetic King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail,' Walter Wink's 'The Powers that Be' and Wallis' 'God's Politics.'

The Rev. Ira Zepp is a retired pastor in the Baltimore-Washington Conference.