http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20910659/site/newsweek/?gt1=10357

Extreme Makeover
What if you spent one year following every rule in the Bible? A. J.
Jacobs did exactly that.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20910659/site/newsweek/?gt1=10357

Extreme Makeover
What if you spent one year following every rule in the Bible? A. J.
Jacobs did exactly that.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jennie Yabroff
Newsweek
Updated: 5:06 p.m. ET Sept. 21, 2007

Sept. 21, 2007 - After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the entire
Encyclopaedia Britannica for his book "The Know-It-All," he figured he
had the yearlong experiment thing down. How much harder could it be to
follow every rule in the Bible? Much, much harder, he soon discovered,
as he found himself growing his beard, struggling not to curse and
asking strangers for permission to stone them for adultery. Jacobs
spent the year carrying around a stapled list of the more than 700
rules and prohibitions identified in the Good Book, and also consulted
with religious leaders and spent time with the Amish, Hassidic Jews
and Jehovah's Witnesses. He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Jennie Yabroff about
his experience and his new book, "The Year of Living Biblically"
(Simon & Schuster), which goes on sale Oct. 9. Excerpts:

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."

There seems to be a great interest in religion and fundamentalism in
our culture right now. Why do you think that is?
As far as I can see it, it goes in waves. Now it seems like the third
great awakening. Is that right? I've forgotten my encyclopedia
knowledge. But I do think we're going through a wave right now. You
certainly see it with Islam. I think it's ebbed a little bit because
the atheist movement is creating backlash against the religious
movement, so it might have peaked a year ago. But it's certainly the
defining issue of our time. I hope the book will appeal to both the
sacred and the profane.

Are you a more religious person as a result of this experiment?
Well, I don't want to give away the ending, but let's say I started
the year as an agnostic, and now I am a reverent agnostic. Whether or
not there is a God, I believe in sacredness. Rituals can be sacred,
the Sabbath can be sacred however you choose to observe it.

Which is the greater learning tool, the Bible or the encyclopedia?
That's a tough question. The Bible project was a lot more difficult
than the encyclopedia project. The Bible affected every single part of
my life, it affected the way I walked, the way I dressed, the way I
hugged my wife, the way I ate. The year was the most extreme makeover
of my life. In terms of which is the better learning tool, the
encyclopedia does contain a lot of biblical passages in the different
books, so it might contain most of the Bible in it.

Most of the religious figures you met with seemed very willing to help
you with your quest. Were you afraid anyone would be offended by the
idea of you doing this as a commercial project, or see it as a
gimmick?
Yes, I thought I would encounter that. I didn't encounter it that
much, and I don't know why. Maybe because I went in really curious, I
didn't go in to mock religion. It was much more a journey to
understand. There are parts of the book where I take the Bible
literally and show that that is not a good way to read the Bible.
There are people in America who do read it that way, and I think that
is a mistake. So there is that aspect to the book, but at the same
time it is an earnest spiritual quest where I'm trying to figure out
if something's missing in my life and what I should tell my kids about
religion. I actually invited a Jehovah's Witness over to my apartment,
and I think I'm the only person in history who out-Bible-talked a
Jehovah's Witness. After three hours, he looked at his watch and told
me he had to leave.

What rule was the hardest to follow?
Two kinds of rules were hard. Avoiding sins we commit every day like
lying, gossiping and coveting was hard, and then there were the rules
that were hard to do in modern life, like stoning adulterers. But I
did manage to fulfill that one. What happened was, I was in the park,
dressed in my white garb, and this man in his 70s came over and asked
what I was doing. I explained I was trying to follow every rule in the
Bible as literally as possible, including growing my beard, not mixing
fibers, stoning adulterers, and he said, "I'm an adulterer, are you
going to stone me?" I said, "Yeah that would be great." The Bible
doesn't say what size the stones have to be, so I had been carrying
around these pebbles in my pocket for just such an occasion. I took
the pebbles out of my pocket, and he instantly picked one up and threw
it at me, so I decided, an eye for an eye, and I tossed one at him. It
did provide an entry for talking to people about capital punishment
and the Bible. How could they stone adulterers, what was life like
back then, does it apply today. I tried to say to the guy, you
shouldn't sleep with other women, but I don't know if it sunk in.

Reading this book, I felt so bad for your wife.
Yes, after "The Know-It-All" she was hoping I'd do a book about eating
in every restaurant in New York. She's a saint. It definitely put some
stress in our marriage. There was the beard, I had this hedgehog on my
face. She wouldn't kiss me for two months. Also, the Bible tells you
to build a hut. And since I couldn't get permission to build one on
the sidewalks of New York, I built a hut in our apartment. My wife
didn't appreciate the construction project in our living room.

Many women say some passages in the Bible can seem pretty
misogynistic. Was that a problem for your relationship?
It was. Parts of the Bible say that the man is the head of the
household and should make the decisions, which did not translate into
reality in our household. She found that a disturbing part of
religion. It was something I really had to wrestle with. One of the
lessons of the book is, there is some picking and choosing in
following the Bible, and I think that's OK. Some people call that
cafeteria religion, which is supposed to be a disparaging term, but I
think there's nothing wrong with cafeterias, I've had some delicious
meals in cafeterias. I've also had some terrible meals in cafeterias.
It's all about picking the right parts. You want to take a heaping
serving of the parts about compassion, mercy and gratefulness-instead
of the parts about hatred and intolerance.

Once the experiment ends, you write about being feeling unanchored
without your list of rules. Were you comforted by the restrictions of
living Biblically? And do you think that's part of the attraction of
organized religion for many people?
Oh, absolutely. We all talk about freedom of choice, but there's
something very attractive about freedom from choice. Religion provides
structure, mooring, anchoring. Should you covet? No. Should you give
10 percent to the needy? Yes. It really structures your life. After my
year I felt unmoored, overwhelmed by choice. I have adjusted, but I'm
still overwhelmed by choice, as we all are in America.

What's the next book?
I'm waiting for divine inspiration. Seriously, I happen to love these
experiments, and I like reading about other people's experiments as
well, so I'd like to stay in the genre for a couple more books. I
think it's a really interesting way to approach a subject. These books
are like memoir, with added value. You get someone's life, and you
also get an introduction to a whole fascinating topic.