Journalist Decides to Follow Every Bible Rule for One Year
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Tue, October 09, 2007
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- (5) comments so far
It’s been a little over a year since your experiment ended and you shaved your beard. How’s the life of sin?
A. J. Jacobs: It’s all right. I miss my sin-free life, but I guess I was never sin free. I was able to cut down on my coveting maybe 40 percent, but I was still a coveter. Flat-screen TVs, the front yard of my friend in the suburbs, a better cell phone, higher Amazon rankings. And that’s not to mention coveting my neighbor’s wife. I live in New York, I work in publishing, so there’s a lot of coveting, lying and gossiping.
What, if any, rules are you still following?
I’m not Gandhi or Angelina Jolie, but I made some strides. The experience changed me in big ways and small ways. There’s a lot about gratefulness in the Bible, and I would say I’m more thankful. I focus on the hundred little things that go right in a day, instead of the three or four things that go wrong. And I love the Sabbath. There’s something I really like about a forced day of rest. Also, during the experiment I wore a lot of white clothes, because Ecclesiastes says let your garments always be white, and I loved it, so I look like Tom Wolfe now. Wearing white just made me happier. I couldn’t be in a bad mood walking down the street looking like I was about to play in the semifinals at Wimbledon. One thing I learned is that the outside affects the inside, your behavior shapes your thoughts. I also really liked what one of my spiritual advisers said, which was that you can view life as a series of rights and entitlements, or a series of responsibilities. I like seeing my life as a series of responsibilities. It’s sort of, “Ask not what the world can do for you, ask what you can do for the world.”
There seems to be a great interest in religion and fundamentalism in our culture right now. Why do you think that is?
As far as I can see it, it goes in waves. Now it seems like the third great awakening. Is that right? I’ve forgotten my encyclopedia knowledge. But I do think we’re going through a wave right now. You certainly see it with Islam. I think it’s ebbed a little bit because the atheist movement is creating backlash against the religious movement, so it might have peaked a year ago. But it’s certainly the defining issue of our time. I hope the book will appeal to both the sacred and the profane.
Are you a more religious person as a result of this experiment?
Well, I don’t want to give away the ending, but let’s say I started the year as an agnostic, and now I am a reverent agnostic. Whether or not there is a God, I believe in sacredness. Rituals can be sacred, the Sabbath can be sacred however you choose to observe it.
Which is the greater learning tool, the Bible or the encyclopedia?
That’s a tough question. The Bible project was a lot more difficult than the encyclopedia project. The Bible affected every single part of my life, it affected the way I walked, the way I dressed, the way I hugged my wife, the way I ate. The year was the most extreme makeover of my life. In terms of which is the better learning tool, the encyclopedia does contain a lot of biblical passages in the different books, so it might contain most of the Bible in it.
Most of the religious figures you met with seemed very willing to help you with your quest. Were you afraid anyone would be offended by the idea of you doing this as a commercial project, or see it as a gimmick?
Yes, I thought I would encounter that. I didn’t encounter it that much, and I don’t know why. Maybe because I went in really curious, I didn’t go in to mock religion. It was much more a journey to understand. There are parts of the book where I take the Bible literally and show that that is not a good way to read the Bible. There are people in America who do read it that way, and I think that is a mistake. So there is that aspect to the book, but at the same time it is an earnest spiritual quest where I’m trying to figure out if something’s missing in my life and what I should tell my kids about religion. I actually invited a Jehovah’s Witness over to my apartment, and I think I’m the only person in history who out-Bible-talked a Jehovah’s Witness. After three hours, he looked at his watch and told me he had to leave.bible
What rule was the hardest to follow?
Two kinds of rules were hard. Avoiding sins we commit every day like lying, gossiping and coveting was hard, and then there were the rules that were hard to do in modern life, like stoning adulterers. But I did manage to fulfill that one. What happened was, I was in the park, dressed in my white garb, and this man in his 70s came over and asked what I was doing. I explained I was trying to follow every rule in the Bible as literally as possible, including growing my beard, not mixing fibers, stoning adulterers, and he said, “I’m an adulterer, are you going to stone me?” I said, “Yeah that would be great.” The Bible doesn’t say what size the stones have to be, so I had been carrying around these pebbles in my pocket for just such an occasion. I took the pebbles out of my pocket, and he instantly picked one up and threw it at me, so I decided, an eye for an eye, and I tossed one at him. It did provide an entry for talking to people about capital punishment and the Bible. How could they stone adulterers, what was life like back then, does it apply today. I tried to say to the guy, you shouldn’t sleep with other women, but I don’t know if it sunk in.
More here from Newsweek... Thanks, Randy, for the heads up!
After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica for his book “The Know-It-All,” he figured he had the yearlong experiment thing down. How much harder could it be to follow every rule in the Bible? Much, much harder, he soon discovered, as he found himself growing his beard, struggling not to curse and asking strangers for permission to stone them for adultery. Jacobs spent the year carrying around a stapled list of the more than 700 rules and prohibitions identified in the Good Book, and also consulted with religious leaders and spent time with the Amish, Hassidic Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses. He spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Jennie Yabroff about his experience and his new book, “The Year of Living Biblically” (Simon & Schuster), which goes on sale Oct. 9.
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Leonard on Tue, October 09, 2007
This was fascinating to me for some reason. I really thought it interesting e noticed how much the bible has to say about gratefulness. Thanks for the post.
Daniel on Tue, October 09, 2007
Fascinating!!!
David E Thomas on Tue, October 09, 2007
I guess this guy found it to be pragmatically true that there is none righteous, no not one. However there seems to be no repentance leading to regeneration.
Randy Ehle on Tue, October 09, 2007
What an experiment! How easy it would be to brush this aside as a publicity stunt, but it seems that the guy went in with a real interest in learning something. And it sounds like he came out with some good questions, too, like “How could they stone adulterers, what was life like back then, does it apply today?” Answering those is, in many respects, a big part of what pastors ought to be teaching their congregations.
Peter Hamm on Tue, October 09, 2007
The first line says it all.
“It’s all right. I miss my sin-free life, but I guess I was never sin free. I was able to cut down on my coveting maybe 40 percent, but I was still a coveter.”
Never heard a better argument for trusting Jesus for my salvation.
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