intersect Under the Rabbi's Microscope: Literally Living the Law   INTERSECT (Where the Bible Meets Life) is a regular column of ONE Magazine featuring Dr. Garnett Reid, a member of the Bible faculty at Free Will Baptist Bible College. Email Garnett greid@fwbbc.edu

Let me see if I get this right. If I take the Bible’s commands literally, I cannot wear a poly-wool blend sport coat, but I am to wear white—always white! Catfish is off my menu. I can’t shave, and depressed friends should expect a bottle of wine from me.

That’s the idea behind The Year of Living Biblically, a book subtitled "One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. The author, A. J. Jacobs, an editor for Esquire magazine, sets out to examine why the Bible is still such a major force in our culture. His strategy? For one year, he decides to, as he puts it, “follow the Bible literally.”

The 700 Rule Club

Even though his wife, friends, and co-workers suspect that he’s off the deep end, Jacobs, a self-confessed Jewish agnostic, begins his quest by compiling every biblical rule, guideline, or suggestion he can find. The resulting list—over 700 rules—comes to more than 72 pages.

After 12 months of trying to live the law, he offers a few dos and many don’ts about how to read and practice Scripture. Some are side-splitting, hilarious. Others are heart-breaking.

For example, he wrestles with:

• Winking (Prov. 16:30), cursing (Eph. 5:4), dancing (2 Sam. 6:14), and movie going (Prov. 11:6).

• Disciplining his son with the rod (Prov. 13:24); he resolves the dilemma with a Nerf bat.

• Blowing the ram’s horn to begin a new month (Ps. 81:3).

• Bringing home a rabbi who specializes in finding “mixed fibers” (Lev. 19:19) in his wardrobe—with a microscope, even!

• Learning to play the harp (Deut. 33:2).

• Eating insects (Lev. 11:22); he finds a website where you can buy “micro-livestock”—edible insects!

• Stoning an adulterer (Lev: 20:27); he does!

He visits an Amish community, a snake-handling church in East Tennessee, and a section of Brooklyn where chickens are sacrificed. He attends Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, interviews Tony Campolo, and argues with a Jehovah’s Witness.

Not So Fast, My Friend

In contrast to the many obscure biblical laws he bumps into, Jacobs also struggles with serious issues: coveting, stealing, lying, tithing, gossip, lust, and anger. He unfortunately defends homosexuality, saying, “God and humans are in a quest to reveal new meanings of the Bible …We don’t have to sit back and passively accept that Leviticus bans [homosexuality] … if other convincing ways of reading can be found.”

Serious flaws such as this one tend to negate the more positive lessons he explores, such as:

• The high moral standards of the Old Testament prophets.

• His sense of “feeling God’s pleasure” as he—Jacobs—gives to others’ needs.

• The significance life would take on if creation were true (he’s an evolutionist).

• A hunger for “spirituality.”

• The beauty of the law’s structure and order versus the “fetish” of too much focus on the individual.

Saddest of all is his refusal to confess Jesus as Messiah as the end result of the law (Rom. 10:4). “I should accept Jesus as Lord,” Jacobs admits, “but I just can’t do it . . . though I do think of Jesus as a great man, I don’t come away from the experience accepting him as savior.”

The Year of Living Biblically doesn’t offer many helpful solutions, but it does raise one of the most vital yet difficult questions in the Christian life: What does a New Testament Christian do with Old Testament law? What role, if any, does the law have for Christ’s followers? Since we are under grace, do we forget it?

Ignore it? Keep some of it? If so, what parts? Why is the law even there in the first place since some of it seems so strange (just take a look at Deut. 21:4!)?

One friend of Jacobs offers a nugget of wisdom about these seemingly odd orders: “You can’t know the mind of God. There may be benefits beyond what we can know or imagine” as we bend our wills to His, even in the areas we don’t understand.

In the next column, I will answer these concerns. After all, living biblically is not just a clever marketing idea for a book. It’s why we’re here on planet Earth.