Leadership Journal

Can the teachings of the Bible be followed literally, every jot and tittle? A.J. Jacobs, a secular Jew and editor at large for Esquire magazine in New York City, spent an entire year trying to find out. The result was a book, The Year of Living Biblically (Simon & Schuster, 2007), as well as good doses of insight and personal growth. He dressed in white and let his beard grow. And it was life changing. "The year was the most fascinating year of my life, and completely changed my life and perspective. I learned from the Bible to be much more thankful. I think I became more community minded as opposed to individual minded, because the Bible is all about being a part of community."

A lot of it is so startlingly relevant to today. I had a very secular childhood, so I didn't know much about the Bible before starting. I thought, How can this 2,000- to 3,000-year-old book have any relevance to today? The parts on avoiding gossip and lying and coveting, these are huge issues that I struggle with. I loved having this Book that taught me how to have an extreme ethical makeover.

Forgiveness was a big one. Forgiveness is such a hard thing. Even when I did forgive, I forgave with an asterisk. That was a problem. Paul says that love does not keep score. I disobeyed this literally because, before my year, I had been keeping score of my wife's arguments with me. Any time I would win an argument or she would make a mistake, I'd always jot those down in my Treo in a little file so that I could remember them. The Bible taught me to get rid of that. I showed my wife the list, and she just laughed at me. Her response was amusement mixed with pity that I would even need to keep such a list.

I had been a workaholic, so I would work 24 hours a day. The first thing I would do when I woke up was check my Blackberry. The Sabbath is a great thing, because the Bible is saying you can't work. You can't check e-mail. You have to spend the day with your family. It's a real smell-the-roses type of day. I found it to be a day for joy, for just really reconnecting with my life and realizing that work is not everything. I loved it, but it was a huge struggle. I had to do it in stages. I still practice the Sabbath now. I'm Jewish, so I do it on Saturday. It's a day where I spend time with the family and refuse to work.

One thing I learned was how much I sinned. That was a little disturbing, but once you start to pay attention to the amount that you lie and gossip and covet and even steal– I was taken aback and that was a real eye-opener. I don't steal cars, but even something like taking three straws at Starbucks when you only need one, that could be considered stealing. I became very aware of taking other people's things without asking.

I did end up stoning an adulterer, so that was interesting.

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