'Jacobs sets himself the challenge of following every rule in the Bible literally for one year.'

Steve Tomkins believes that Christians should remember what the Bible is from to time to time

“The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants,” said B B Warfield, the Presbyterian theologian and principle of Princeton Seminary a hundred years ago.

It is exactly this sort of idolatrous cobblers that gives militant atheists today the bommyknocker they need to hit religion over the head with.

You know the kind of thing: “Christians are supposed to believe every word of the Bible, but the Bible says something really weird towards the end of one of those long books in the middle, so Christians are dangerous nutters.”

The latest attempt to take the word of God at its word is a book called ‘The Year of Living Biblically’, by AJ Jacobs. He sets himself the challenge of following every rule in the Bible literally for one year.

It sounds like a pretty good way of taking the p*ss, but it turns out there’s a bit more to it than that. Jacobs is a New York Jewish agnostic from a totally secular family. (The closest they ever got to Judaism, he says, was putting a star of David on top of the Christmas tree.)

Attempt

His attempt to obey all the scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, is he says, a genuine attempt to try out God and discover whether he’s been missing out all these years.

Now, I suspect that this may make more sense from a Jewish point of view than from a Christian. I’ve heard it said that whereas as what makes you a Christian is what you believe, what makes you a Jew is what you do. Orthodoxy versus orthopraxis, if you will, though I suspect you probably won’t.

But it’s hard to think of a worse way to introduce yourself to Christianity than this. And I think it’s interesting to consider why.

You can read the Gospels and find out what Jesus said and did. You can try out a variety of churches, see, hear and perhaps smell the faith in action, experience the Christian community. You can read what Christians have written about their faith. You can talk to believers about their opinions and way of life.

These things will introduce you to Christianity as it actually is. And as for following every instruction in the Bible?

The interesting thing is that the way so many Christians talk, like our old friend BB, that ought to be exactly the ticket. Do everything the Bible tells you to do, and you’re there, you’re in with God.

Injunctions

The problem is – one of the problems – that no Christian ever did anything remotely like that themselves, from stoning adulterers to becoming a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven.

Even people who tell you they accept every word literally find ways to overlook or reinterpret countless biblical injunctions.

The simple fact is that the Bible is a diverse collection of writings that Christians look to for instruction, guidance, encouragement, challenge and inspiration.

And some bits they find more helpful than others.