The Year of Living Biblically

Amazon sells it: The Year of Living Biblically : One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. It’s A.J. Jacob’s new book, which describes his attempt to follow every rule in the Bible for a year.

Here, this is from a Newsweek interview:

NEWSWEEK: 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 Ghandi 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 God can do for you, ask what you can do for God." [continue]

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