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Christianity Today, June (Web-only), 2009 |

Recovering from 'The Year of Living Biblically'

Author A. J. Jacobs talks with CT about becoming a minor celebrity in the Christian world.

Interview by Mark Galli | posted 6/30/2009 10:00AM

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Just because something is irrational doesn't make it bad. Rituals can be meaningful and beautiful even though they don't make logical sense. This rational project was almost exploring the other side. What if you tried to take away all irrationality?

Even with that project, you have to start with kind of a baseline of what constitutes rational and what doesn't constitute rational.

There's the rub. I just became fascinated with this area called Behavioral Economics, where they talk about all of the bad choices that humans make based on, basically, faulty problems with our brain that are built-in design flaws. Like when we focus on the one airplane crash per month as opposed to the 10,000 car crashes per month. And so we totally overestimate the risk of flying. That's just one example of hundreds of what our brain does.

It seems like you have inspired a number of similar projects, such as David Plotz's Good Book and Benyamin Cohen's My Jesus Year. Do you have an idea what the fascination is behind these sorts of things?

I was very excited because there's a church in Massachusetts that did 30 days of living by Leviticus. Then there's Ed Dobson out of Grand Rapids [who wrote The Year of Living like Jesus]. I thanked him for giving me credit, and I said, "That was very biblical of you." I think that part of the appeal of this genre is that you get to follow someone. It's almost voyeuristic. It's the idea of walking in someone else's shoes or sandals, as I would say.

So what's the next project? Any other living-with-something?

This next book [The Guinea Pig Diaries] is actually coming out soon, but it's basically a compilation of shorter projects. After the last year-long project, I had people telling me that I had to make amends to my wife because I put her through so much. So this was the month of doing everything she said, so basically the month of foot massages and Kate Hudson movies.

Related Elsewhere:

Christianity Today also interviewed A. J. Jacobs after his year of living biblically.

The Year of Living Biblically is available from Amazon.com and other retailers.

A. J. Jacobs's website has more on the book and upcoming projects.

Books & Culture also reviewed the book.

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Mike	Posted: July 03, 2009 4:28 PM


But, Nora, when the new covenant came into effect there still were no supermarkets or electrical refrigeration. So there must have been something more to the rituals than rational health concerns.

Jan	Posted: July 01, 2009 4:07 AM

It must have been a very interesting experience. I find it hard to call it "living biblically" because living under the laws of moses are not the only way to live that can be called biblical. If someone tried to live like Abraham for a year that would look VERY different to the Jewish thing but Abraham is the father of the Christian faith. Then we look at the new covenant and who do you live like then? Under the new covenant it's not biblical to live under the old rules. So I find the description of living biblically a little vague and misleading. Our biggest struggle as people who are born again is to live by faith, and the law is the opposite of faith, it doesn't encourage it but kills it.

Nora Charles

Posted: June 30, 2009 8:41 PM

Very interesting, although I feel a lot of people - potentially Christians included - who look at Levitical laws and shake their heads askance, fail to take into account the *rationale* in the context of the time they were performed, they also fail to understand the historical context. Things that seem weird or unfair to us only do so because technology has changed. Ritual washing? Well, duh, no reticulated water. 'Clean' and 'unclean' food? Sorry, no supermarkets, no electrical refrigeration, great risk of food poisoning. God's laws were perfect for the time and as Christians we are liberated from many of the arcane rituals because of the new covenant and the expectation that *our* lives are the living sacrifice that God wants to find acceptable.

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