Calvin at 500

John Calvin, the Genevan reformer, is having a birthday on July 9, and he’s 500 years old! Um, so what?

“It’s not about you.”

That’s the first line of Rick Warren’s mega-best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life. “If you want to know why you were placed on this planet,” he goes on to say, “you must begin with God.”

This is a very God-centered agenda, one that’s based on the belief that you cannot discover your life’s purpose by starting with a focus on yourself. Instead, you have to turn to your Creator, and discover the reason God has put you in this world.

It’s not about you. It’s all about God.

So where would Rick Warren get such an idea? It’s hard to say, exactly. But if you pick up this particular thread of Christian thinking and tug on it, you’re going to find yourself face to face with a 500-year-old man named John Calvin.

Famous for his floppy hat, plain dress and stern expression, Calvin seems to be the antithesis of a laid-back, California-cool pastor such as Rick Warren. But both men believe that knowledge of self requires knowledge of God. And both believe that God was acting in...