I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.
The outer affects the inner.
The Bible is so strange, so utterly bizarre, no human brain could have come up with it.
Greenberg tells me, “Never blame a text from the Bible for your behavior. It’s irresponsible. Anybody who says X, Y, and Z is in the Bible – it’s as if one says, ‘I have no role in evaluating this.’” The.
Mrs. Bush answers: “I think you ought to treat your spouse like you treat your friends. You clean your house for your friends, you make sure they’re taken care of. A spouse often comes second. So treat your spouse like the friends. Don’t just go halfway. If each spouse goes seventy-five percent of the way, it’s a perfect match.
For most of my life, I’ve been working under the paradigm that my behavior should, ideally, have a logical basis. But if you live biblically, this is not true. I have to adjust my brain to this. You.
I thought that religion, for all the good it does, seemed too risky for our modern world.
The Bible may have not been dictated by God, it may have had a messy and complicated birth, one filled with political agendas and outdated ideas – but that doesn’t mean the Bible can’t be beautiful and sacred.
Studies show that the more you pay attention to your body’s statistics, the greater the chance you’ll adopt a healthy lifestyle. This idea underpins the Quantified Self movement, in which adherents track everything from caloric output to selenium levels. The mere act of weighing yourself daily makes it more likely you’ll shed pounds, according to a University of Minnesota study. Keeping a food journal makes you eat fewer fatty foods, according to another study. And pedometers make you walk more.
Reading Encyclopaedia Britannica is like channel surfing on a very highbrow cable system.
I love this one in A. J. Jacobs “The Year of Living Bibically”. Jacobs has a Jewish friend living in Wisconsin who tells Jacobs the Jews there refer to themselves as “the frozen chosen”.
Remember, sometimes you have to look beyond the weirdness. It’s like the temple in ancient Jerusalem. If you went there, you’d see oxen being slaughtered and all sorts of things. But look beyond the weirdness, to what it means.
My growing collection of facts keeps overlapping with my life.
As her head rests on her pillow, she’ll go through the alphabet from A to Z and try to think of something to be grateful for that starts with each letter – A for her husband Andrew’s blueberry pancakes; B for bocce, her favorite game in the summer; etc.
Pain is annoying and unnecessary, like getting an e-mail in all caps. It’s like a six-year-old who alerts you every fifteen seconds that he wants Hungry Hungry Hippos for his birthday. Yes, I understand. Message received.
There’s almost always a church youth group at the soup kitchen. I have yet to see an atheists’ youth group. Yeah, I know, religious people don’t have a monopoly on doing good. I’m sure that there are many agnostics and atheists out there slinging mashed potatoes at other soup kitchens. I know the world is full of selfless secular gropus like Doctors without Borders. But I’ve got to say: It’s a lot easier to do good if you put your faith in a book that requires you to do good.
When I force myself to utter the awkward phrase, “I am grateful,” I actually start to feel a bit more grateful... It’s basic cognitive behavioral therapy: Behave in a certain way, and your mind will eventually catch up with your actions.
There are only three things I want you to take away from your Judaism: 1. Love of family. 2. Love of learning. 3. Love of responsibility toward others.
We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
G-rated language is making me a less angry person. Behavior shapes emotion.
It’s not that my parents badmouthed religion. It’s just that religion wasn’t for us. We lived in the twentieth century, for crying out loud. In our house, spirituality was almost a taboo subject, much like my father’s salary or my sister’s clove-cigarette habit.