Taking it Literally: A Year of Living Biblically?

Photography by the Telegraph

Presuming it would make him a truly fundamentalist Christian, A J Jacobs, a comedy writer decided to try to follow the Bible literally for 12 months. Other than appearing to completely misunderstand that it was more likely to make him into an orthodox Jew than a Christian (for which a certain understanding of the nature of sin, the need for faith in God's saving grace effected through Christ on the cross and an experience of inner renewal would be required), it is still an amusing diversion from which a book can be written.

One of the funniest reflections that Jacobs has is that of the frustration his wife felt while Jacobs tried to follow ceremonial purity regulations during his wife's time of the month:

'He persevered with not touching his wife, Julie, while she was menstruating. This went down as well as can be expected. The ban extended to sitting in chairs she had used, prompting her at one point to ring him at work to say she had just sat on every seat and chair in the apartment.
Jacobs bought his own collapsible chair. Julie, who isn't religious either, says she still "felt like a leper". She adds: "When it comes down to it, the Bible is very sexist. It was written a long time ago and to follow it literally now is crazy." '

Perhaps Julie has a bit more sense than her husband. Jacobs claims to have read the Bible to extract all the rules he could. Perhaps he didn't quite grasp the message of Christ. That the law merely highlights our sin, our lack of ability to live right in God's sight. And that Christ has made an end to the law by taking the law and putting it to death in his body on the cross. That Jesus' sacrifice makes it possible for us to be made righteous in God's sight through faith in his blood.

Christians don't seek to cherry-pick which parts of the Bible they will live by; rather, by a proper process of right interpretation (the long word for this is hermeneutics) Christians seek to live in a faithful way before God, making careful judgement as to what the Bible as a whole is really trying to say. It isn't about taking the Bible literally, it's about taking it seriously.