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.”
Did you find what you learned from the Bible applicable to your everyday life?
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.
Which biblical teachings stuck with you?
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.
What did taking a Sabbath do for you?
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.
What did you learn about yourself?
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.
How did people respond to your new behavior?
I did end up stoning an adulterer, so that was interesting.
At times during my year I tried to really get into character and dress like an Old Testament person, so I had my beard and I was wearing sandals and robes occasionally. I was in the park and this man came up to me and said, “Why are you dressed like that?” And I said, “Well, I’m trying to follow the Old Testament, everything from the Ten Commandments to stoning an adulterer.”
And he said, “Well, I’m an adulterer. Are you going to stone me?”
And I said, “Well, yeah, that would be great.” I had been carrying around a pocketful of stones, hoping for this interaction. They were actually pebbles because the Bible doesn’t say the size of the stones. So I took out my pebbles and he grabbed them from my hand and threw them at my face. He was a very confrontational adulterer. I was taken aback but I figured “an eye for an eye,” so I tossed one back at him.
How has your faith changed, if at all?
I started out as an agnostic. I grew up with no religion at all. Throughout the year, I went through all sorts of permutations, including believing very strongly in a present and loving God. Part of this was because I was praying all the time, and when you pray for a year, you can’t help but start to believe in the being that you’re praying to.
By the end of the year when I stopped praying as much all the time, I sort of settled into a radically different agnosticism. I am what a friend of mine calls a “reverent agnostic.” Whether or not there is a God, I believe there is something very important about the idea of sacredness: prayer can be sacred, the Sabbath can be sacred, family is sacred, rituals are sacred. That was a huge change in perspective for me.
But I never did convert; I never did make the leap of faith to accept Jesus as my savior. As I read the New Testament, I more tried to live by his ethical teachings, which did change my life.
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