Stop the presses! After all these thousands of years, it’s finally newsworthy! “What’s that”, you ask?
It’s finally newsworthy that someone has attempted to spend one whole year seeking to “live Biblically”! By “Living Biblically” the author means to”follow the Bible as literally as you can in the modern age.” That’s what writer and Biblical Bon Vivant A. J. Jacobs says he did in order to create his new book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
From all the hubbub in the press, the uninitiated would surely believe that living Biblically is something that’s never been attempted before in the history of mankind. That notion of course will prove a great disappointment for those who erroneously believed they had - possibly - spent the better part of their lives trying to live Biblically and assumed that had more to do with “Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind” and “Loving your neighbor as yourself” than dressing in white and plucking a harp on Main Street!
But thankfully we know what the problem is now. Till now we thought only those dreaded fundamentalists did that and that obeying the Bible literally was always a bad thing! But thanks to Mr. Jacobs’ work and it’s glad acceptance by the media, we know it’s actually chic to be a Biblical literalist. If only Jerry Falwell had known years ago that his real problem was that he wasn’t taking the Bible literally enough to be chic. A white robe, bushy beard, and a harp instead of that stuffy dark suit and clean-shaven face and he’d have died a media darling.
Assuming Mr. Jacobs has it right about what it means to be Living Biblically it’s easy to see where so many Christians have gone wrong in the past: the problem was all those messy hermeneutics (that’s pronounced her-muh-nyoo-tiks). That’s the art/science of interpreting the Bible. But before you spend too much time learning to pronounce “hermeneutics” - don’t bother. Jacobs’ work unravels the key to Living Biblically, and it’s never yet been found in a dusty theological tome.
Those pesky reformation scholars who birthed our modern mainline denominations got very hot and bothered about hermeneutics and now we know it did them no good. You see, while they were worried about understanding the meanings of words in their original language and historical context, they were going astray. While they learned long dead languages like Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic and studied the texts of neighboring cultures to understand the Bible better, it was a futile exercise to be sure. When they struggled to determine if a text’s meaning was to be understood literally or metaphorically, it was just a fool’s errand. It was just all a wasted effort when they risked their lives by confessing that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. Those fools! They actually thought that Living Biblically had a bit more to do with faith than a penchant for feta cheese! While even that flat-Bible theocrat John Calvin had to admit there was a “New Testament” to add a bit of flexibility to those Mosaic commands, Johnny boy it appears was just a hard partying libertine compared to Mr. Jacobs’ literalism approach.
Now that all those failed hermeneutical principles have been exposed as worthless - at least as far as creating positive media buzz goes - people wanting to Live Biblically just need to understand one thing in order get with the media approved Biblical literalism program.
To Live Biblically you evidently only need to read the Bible with the same mindset as a teenager whose mother asks “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you join them?” and take this as a personal recommendation that you too jump off a cliff RIGHT NOW. Painstaking prayerful study of the text is not, it seems, required.
It’s possible of course, Mr. Jacobs might be wrong in this opinion. While the saints of God have been known to seek to Live Biblically as long as God gave them breath, Mr. Jacobs gave up his experiment after only just 52 weeks. So it hardly seems that an exhaustive longitudinal study took place after all. Perhaps we’d best inquire about what it means to Live Biblically from those who sought to live this way to the end - the apostles and martyrs of the faith seem an appropriate place to start.
But perhaps it’s better that Mr. Jacobs’ experiment was aborted so soon. Given Mr. Jacobs’ hermeneutics, he might have fallen prey to those strange people who advocate drinking their own excess bodily fluids because, after all, Proverbs 5:15 literally says “Drink water from your own cistern”. Sure, that verse is intended to instruct men to love their own wives and flee adultery, but given the rest of Mr. Jacob’s approach the Living Biblically that pedestrian interpretation just won’t do! On a more practical note though Mr. Jacobs noted that one of the reasons for terminating his experiment so soon was that Mr. Jacobs’ wife wouldn’t kiss him for the last of his two months’ of Living Biblically thanks to his bushy beard. The cost of Living Biblically was getting too high. And perhaps it’s better that way. Had he taken Matthew 5:29* too literally Biblical Literalism might not have gotten even this brief approving glance from those in the media who are so wise as to know what Living Biblically should truly mean.
While we certainly commend all attempts to Live Biblically perhaps our forefathers in the faith actually knew more about that than we sometimes give them credit for. Perhaps some Reformation input might be in order if we truly wish to live in a way that puts the Bible to good use instead of just aping Biblical texts with the assumption we know what they mean.
Related Link: “Shrimp Anyone?” That Mainline Red Herring About The Bible
*If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. (NIV)
Image courtesy MSNBC
