The Unread: David Sax on A.J. Jacob's "The Year of Living Biblically"
September 25, 2009
With September here and class back in session, The Afterword asked several Canadian authors to answer this question: If you could add one book to the high school curriculum – a book which students couldn’t graduate with until it was read – what would it be, and why? голова болит секс
Here, author David Sax discusses his pick for the curriculum: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by AJ Jacobs.
Oh God.
You’re a tough one to bring into the classroom. Just the idea of mentioning your name in front of students unleashes legions of Bible thumpers, angry parents (who either love you or despise you), bureaucrats, politicians, and reporters. You’re one hot potato, God, and while hot potatoes were once a staple of our educational diet, you’ve gone the way of foie gras: rich and dense, but way too controversial for kids to even touch.
Because outwardly studying organized religion is essentially verboten in Canada’s classrooms, the subject is approached in other ways: by talking about ethics or studying books where some central character is a loosely veiled stand-in for divinity. “Oh, I get it, the lion is supposed to be Jesus.” Cue the protests!
“The Year of Living Biblically” is the perfect book to broach the subject of God without breaking out the pitchforks. In it, Esquire journalist AJ Jacobs spends a year following the rules of the Bible as literally as possible. He grows a long beard, he only wears robes of linen, he throws pebbles at sinners, all in the name of a grand experiment that ultimately questions the value of religion.
This is a funny, laugh out loud book, something that is lacking from our school reading, but it is backed up with solid research and a journalist’s perspective. Jacobs starts out as a skeptic, raised in a Jewish home with very little religion, living in the modern world without much contact with God. By the end of his year, with a beard to rival Moses’, and a regiment of insane rituals that pushes the patience of his extremely tolerant wife, he finds a happy balance of spirituality in his life.
Jacobs’ respectful tone and honest curiosity make it one of the few refreshing takes on God in an era when people feel the need to pick sides on the battlefield of the soul. He meets everyone from evangelical preachers to atheists, and never judges the choices of individuals or gives sermons on how people ought to approach God. That open-mindedness is the book’s greatest strength, and it delivers a far more valuable lesson about respecting the diversity of spiritual viewpoints than most of the “everyone is different and that’s OK” dribble force fed to students in our schools.
• David Sax’s first book, Save the Deli (McClelland & Stewart) goes on sale October 21. топ самых сексуальных женщин
