Living Biblically

A.J. Jacobs has recently published a book called The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Jacobs, an agnostic, carried around a list of all the Biblical rules and prohibitions to follow, and even kept some pebbles in his pocket for impromptu stonings.

In an interview with Newsweek, he talks a bit about the experience. I was fairly unsurprised by his conclusions: religion provides a structure that can serve as an antidote to the sheer volume of choice we are faced with, the Bible is okay as long as you pick and choose the 'good' parts, behavior influences thought, the Bible encourages gratitude, etc. I guess what I found more interesting is how completely he misses the point of living Biblically, even after so much reading and study (I presume). In my mind to live Biblically is to serve God and live under grace with the aid of the Spirit. Not to embrace an anachronistic legalism devoid of faith. It makes me kind of sad, actually, that he sought to understand Christianity by following the law, but didn't discover the fulfillment of the law in Christ and the freedom that entails.