About a year ago, I heard reference to A.J. Jacob's The Year of Living Biblically. I put it on my list of "books to read" on my iGoogle homepage. A year later, it is still the only book on the that list - not because I'm not ambitious, but because I don't iGoogle. Seriously, who needs iGoogle when Gmail does the same stuff? Anyway, a year later, it fell into my lap (the book, of course, not iGoogle!).
Basic reflections: I could have told you exactly what would happen before I picked up this book. See, there's only 2 ways for it to end: either he becomes a believer / follower or he doesn't. And guess what? If it's on the best seller list, I can guarantee I know how it ends.
He did everything right to create a best seller: He took religion (Judaism and Christianity both) just seriously enough to engage even the ardently faithful, but irreverently enough to keep it light. He did his research thoroughly, maintaining fairness to each side of the issues. He touched upon all the key debates, without any firm commitments to any of them. In fact, he laid bare his liberal, agnostic perspective, kept an open mind, and ultimately discovered "spirituality". His words:
In a sense, they were right to worry. You can’t immerse yourself in religion for 12 months and emerge unaffected. At least I couldn’t. Put it this way: If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they’d get along okay, but they’d both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “That guy is kinda delusional.”
But in the end, the spirituality he comes up with is nothing more than a post-modern sense of the divine. Is it true? Partially. But it misses the point completely. He admitted he learned to be thankful, that seemed to be one of his best experiences. However, even he confessed that it was thanks directed toward no one - that when he did try to direct the thanks toward some god, it felt even better / more meaningful.
I was hoping to find something useful for Christians in it, much like I Sold my Soul on eBay. But I didn't. There's no perceptive insight into Christianity. Yes, there's an outsider looking in, but he just admires, shrugs his shoulders, and turns away. We can find no reflection of ourselves in him.
What we do find is a perfect reflection of American culture today. There's a yearning for something deeper, an acceptance of "spirituality", but a turning away from religious tradition.
The results would have been the same if he'd tried Buddhism.
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