Living Biblically - one way to do it...

This is AJ Jacobs. He spent the last year literally living Biblically. He took every instruction on how to live in the Bible and decided to try to literally obey each command. So he didn't shave for a whole year. And he wore white robes and sandals every day. And he did absolutely no work on Saturdays (I'm sure his wife loved that). He even took an Old Testament passage that instructs you not to sit in a chair where a woman may have sat during a certain time of the month, and well, you know, since you never can be too careful really, he started carrying his own chair around with him. At least he knew who had been sitting in that one.

Well, there's a new spin on how to "Be like Jesus." And while I think it misses the point a little bit, AJ stumbled across some pretty profound truths in his one year experiment.

When asked what was the biggest challenge for him, he said: "That'd be no coveting, no lying, no gossiping. They're little sins, but they're killers. My year made me realize just how many of these sins I committed every day. And refraining from them for a year was really hard but completely transforming."

And when asked about what the biggest lesson he learned, AJ said: "Your behavior shapes your beliefs. If you act like a good person, you eventually become a better person. I wasn't allowed to gossip, so eventually I started to have fewer petty thoughts to gossip about. I had to help the less fortunate, so I started to become less self-absorbed. I am not Gandhi or Angelina Jolie, but I made some progress."

There's a great discussion question here: Do our beliefs enable our actions to change? Or does changing our actions help shape (confirm, strengthen) what we believe? What do you think?

Question number 2: Gandhi and Angelina Jolie - same sentence. discuss.