A year of following all the rules in the Bible

Kevin Kelly reviews The Year of Living Biblically, about a guy who "recently spent a year trying to follow all 700 plus rules he found in the Bible. These rules ranged from the obvious Ten Commandments to the more obscure details of Old Testament laws, which ultra orthodox Jews might follow: leaving side hair uncut, dwelling in huts on certain holidays, strict dietary routines. To give some idea of the physical transformation he underwent, the book offers this photo."

From a Newsweek interview:

Q: Are you a more religious person as a result of this experiment?

A: Well, I don't want to give away the ending, but let's say I started the year as an agnostic, and now I am a reverent agnostic. Whether or not there is a God, I believe in sacredness. Rituals can be sacred, the Sabbath can be sacred however you choose to observe it.

Link

So basically he followed any reference to a law, even though many/most were later disregarded with the arrival of Christ - including all the obscure wearing of sackcloth, prohibited foods, growing a beard etc...

Not sure what he was trying to prove - all seemed kinda pointless.

I think he was just bored.

Attending a Catholic wedding last weekend, I was still surprised at all the rules; (bowing as you approach the altar, kneeling,  standing, what to repeat when the speaker raises their hand.) It surprises me that so many of those rituals have endured for (I think) almost 2000 years.   It makes one dizzy but it's kind of fun.  I can see why some people are of the mind that if you fake it (go to church and let yourself get caught up in the atmosphere) you find your faith by sheer contagion. 

Maybe that's what the Newsweek guy was trying to do.  

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

This guy went to the heart of what worship is about -- the physiological effects of carrying out regular rituals based around the idea of spiritual transcendence.  And he concluded that the ritual aspect itself has an effect upon the person carrying titout, regardless of the type of belief system.  This gets at the core of what it means to be a spiritual human being.

You honestly find this uninteresting?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Were you talking to me?

It's just that I'm -- like, so jaded.  And stuff.  Ya know?

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

JVS

Your definition of Worship is well wide of the mark.  Worship *should* be sincere, should come from the heart, and often is spontaneous.  While it's human nature to want to follow ritual, this isn't what real, meaningful worship is about. 

I have been to several catholic services(including some weddings) and they have left me cold.  To me it is robotic ritual - stand up, sit down, recite this, recite that etc.  That ritualism may appeal to some people, but the catholic church like the christian church is based on the bible, and specifically the life and teachings of christ.  The rituals he promoted were getting together once a week and celebrating communion.  Any other layers of rituals on top of that are man-made and often distractions from real worship of God imho.

The most unfortunate thing to me is that non-christians often only view christianity through the prism presented by the roman catholic church, and it's little wonder they never see the awesomeness of a real christian service which is more about real feeling and relationship than laws and rituals.

I think the one thing I liked about growing up Catholic was the fact that our church sessions were structured. At least then I knew how much longer I'd have to sit on that damned pew and listen to someone expounding on the Bible to the nth degree.

Mind you, structure and ritual isn't indigenous to the Catholics. I've been to enough church ceremonies of other denominations to know that one for sure. It's just that the current form of the Catholic Church pretty much prides itself on its pomp and circumstance, so they kind of take center stage on this one. Which is sad because if you stand back, the ceremony of it is indeed rather lovely, but actually going through it every week, you feel like you're on some sort of school schedule. Urgh.

I'm interested to actually check out this book. I don't think anyone was attempting to make a slam on organized religion. I'm not sure why it is that anytime a person posts a thread on this forum with regards to a belief system opposite theirs, we feel the need to treat it as either a personal attack or stupid and trivial. I doubt Angel was trying to rub it in anyone's face. I see it as more of an "information sharing" endeavour.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

It comes very close to my mark -- the fact that the details of our respective belief systems don't match doesn't mean I don't understand the word and haven't experienced anything of its meaning.

I've found that knowing my stuff intellectually about my belief system is part of what's important about worship. Getting in shape on this level allows spontaneous new understanding of things from time to time, and an increased ability to be mentally present to an enhanced degree during a worship practice.

I've found that establishing a special combination of environment and activity to correspond with scheduled worship practices helps attune the body, and therefore the mind, to the subject at hand -- probably through the accumulated Pavlovian connection between stimulus and response as much as the symbolism and inherent qualities of the place and manner of worship. This grounding of routine practice encourages, paradoxically, the kind of spontaneous moments of worship and reverence you describe.

I've found that being open and clear emotionally is another important element. If the feelings of the heart are the furnace of the soul, then belief is the fuel, and it won't do to use unleaded. (Of course, there are different modes of belief. The way I believe it's 6:41 pm is different than the way I believe my shoulder hurts, and the way I believe in any deity will not be the way I believe in the ceiling or the floor.) Either we find this openness in ourselves or we don't, but bookstores make decent money selling how-to's of every conceivable variety, so it should be no serious obstacle to anyone motivated.

When some or all of these three, each one pretty powerful already, sync up -- when our own internal planets align -- we tend to have the kind of revelatory, transcendent experiences that we usually want to tell people about afterward.

If you find that the best place for you to do that is in a Christian church then that is absolutely where you should do it. I can't endorse the idea that one's form of worship confers any general authority over anyone else's definition of it.

Amanda

You're right - it's all about degrees of ritual - with the roman catholics making an artform of it.  For me, where the right degree is...is as Christ outlined.  If the church is about Christ and Christ's teachings, then when he laid out how he saw christians relating to each other, I take notice.  I mean - that IS what it's about, following the teachings of Christ.

Christ didn't identify bishops, popes, nuns, etc - as wonderful as these people may be.  He didn't identify a separate political church, or clusters of cardinals, or massive cathedrals, confessionals, baby christenings...the list goes on.

I think if you're a christian, you follow christ's teachings - it's that simple.  As far as rituals go, he kept that pretty simple too - meet once a week, and celebrate communion to remember his death - the central event of christianity.

Religion aside, there is a natural human desire (which varies in degrees) to follow ritual.  OCDs take it to the extreme, and I recall reading a study that identified a correlation between catholics and those with a predisposition towards OCD.  My father in law suffers from OCD (he's getting better slowly but was incredible), and is a Catholic - and I understand completely why he goes each week and feels the need to go through all the rituals - it comforts him, and he doesn't feel "right" unless rituals are done.

To each his own, but for christians, the variety in worship practices is simply man-made, not God-made.

Ah, this is becoming mildly entertaining. I keep seeing images of this li'l booklet that was once left behind (in the ordinary sense of that term) in the lady's room of the MGM Hotel in Vegas. I got such a kick out of it, I saved it. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I can easily share it without any of you having to try to find that same toilet stall.

Don't say you haven't been warned, all you sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder!

Susan

PS Freud wrote about the similarities between religious zealots and obsessives. And the differences. Now if you believe Freud ever got anything right, you may or may not enjoy this analysis.

Freud begins his article by remarking that there is more than a superficial resemblance in the relationship between the obsessive acts of neurotics and religious observances. In other words, he considers obsessive ceremonials to be of the same class as obsessive thinking, ideas, impulses, etc. For the obsessive neurotic ceremonials appear as small adjustments to particular everyday activities which are carried out in a precise or methodologically varied, manners. Such actions are very formal even though they may seem to us, and indeed to the patient, to be meaningless. Still the person who participates in such actions is incapable of giving them up. And, in fact, any deviation from these activities is responded to by feelings of intolerable anxiety which requires immediate reparation.

Freud says this of obsessive ceremonials: "The performance of a ceremonial can be described by replacing it, as it were, by a series of unwritten laws." That is, the special contentiousness with which an obsessive act is carried out and the anxiety which follows upon its neglect stamp the ceremonial as a 'sacred act.'

In fact Freud notes that any actions may be subject to the possibility of becoming obsessive if it is elaborated by small additions or is given a rhythmic character by means of pauses or repetitions. Freud notes that both compulsions and prohibitions at first apply only to solitary activities and for a long time do not effect one's social behaviour. It is when the obsessive acts start to effect the individual that it become particularly dysfunctional.

Let's look at some of the resemblances and differences between religious acts and obsessive ceremonials.

Similarities:

1. there are in both cases qualms of conscience caused by neglect of the actions;
2. such actions tend to be completely isolated from all other actions (prohibitions against interruptions)
3. there is a high degree of contentiousness in which both religious actions and obsessive acts are carried out in minute detail.

Differences:

1. there is a greater degree of variability in neurotic rituals as compared to the relative stereotyping of religious actions.
2. obsessive rituals are private whereas religious rituals are public;
3. obsessive rituals appear to be foolish and senseless compared to the high degree of significance and symbolic meanings in religious rituals.

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

QUOTE:Is that where Jordan has been hiding out?

You mean in Jamie's Secret Treehouse? 

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

I disagree with Freud's analysis - the differences he outlined are fairly generalised, but imho appear to be easily disproven by the most common examples of OCD.

As for Chick - I read a few of his creations.  There is some truth in them...the problem is, at times it's heavily flavoured with fiction.  Gotta love the over-dramatisation for effect though.

Susan, did I ever send you that 'story of Jack Chick' that was done in the style of Chick tract?  I'm sure I meant to if I didn't.  I thought you'd like it since you had mentioned him before.

I probably shouldn't drag this thread off-topic, but....

On the topic of Jack Chick, and in response to what I consider to be perhaps a too forgiving attitude to him by Cybacat:

A lecturer of mine was giving us his take on what differentiates anti-Semitism from your regular garden variety xenophobia or race hate.  His take (not his own, but I don't remember the source he quoted) was that there is a 'chimerical' slant to anti-Semitism which is more absent in other kinds of xenophobia.  In other words, wild stories and conspiracies are attributed to the Jews which are on a different order of magnitude than ordinary racist assumptions we're familiar with like, 'I think that black men are likely to rape white women'.  What differentiates the two things is that to say, 'All Italians are Mafiosi' is certainly xenophobic and incorrect, but it is not a pure chimeria because there is a kernel of truth to it.  Some Italians are Mafiosi, and the most likely nationality for a Mafiosi is Italian.  However, several examples of fantastic stories have spread about Jews such as the 'blood libel', ritual crucifixions of Christian children in order to mock the death of Jesus, and of course the Protocols.

Why am I saying this?

Because I think that Jack Chick uses exactly these sort of things against his targets if they are Catholics, New Ageists, Muslims, homosexuals or what have you.  He is very respectful of the Jews himself like most good evangelical Pentecostal types.  But I think that what I heard described as 'chimerias' is what he deals in, and that in my opinion is more serious and contemptible than what Cybacat described as 'too much fiction'.

He's apparently quite a nice man in person, but what he does with his 'ministry' is pretty morally reprehensible, and I know because I have looked at every single Jack Chick tract I could ever find; many dozens of them.

Cross wearing experiment : I bought a smaller cross--with the figure of Jesus on it--old Catholic style-- from a Pagan in a curio shop.

Things have been going my way since, although as I think about it, in a technically sinful way for sure.