Driven by Eternity: Make Your Life Count Today and Forever

I didn’t like this book. My daughter was reading it, so I read it along with her.

The book is maybe a bit scattered. It starts by just hammering on the existence of Hell and the magnitude of eternity. I didn’t love this, because it seemed to imply that the only reason to follow Jesus was to avoid Hell.

Then it goes into a weird allegory/parable. The author makes up a fantasy land ruled by a King with followers who either believe in him or don’t. What’s weird about it is how it’s so thinly veiled. The power of a parable is when it makes you think in interesting ways about how two different things equate. In this case, the author took Jesus, Earth, Heaven, and Hell and simply renamed them.

What’s the point of that? It’s wildly clear through the entire thing what is what, and so the “parable” just becomes this mirror into the real story and gets in the way. Why not just tell the story with the real concepts?

Additionally, the book is poorly-written. Lots of exclamation points and qualifications (“My personal belief is…”). In places, the author seems to be begging the reader to believe him.

Finally, I was just maybe the wrong audience for it. The book didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know – like I said, I was reading it just to do something with my daughter. I’m sure there are people for whom the book would be revelatory.

I’ve heard the author is a committed Christian and very influential in other media, which is great. But this particular book did nothing for me.

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