Four star review, originally posted here on June 6, 2024.
This book was, to my happy surprise, the exact book I needed at this exact moment in my life. I thought it would be a light, fun romp. Something simple to distract me from the serious shit of the real world. And it was! But it was also more than that. I was worried Jacobs might just take a piss out of religion and those who cherish it. In other words, he might not give the topic the respect it deserves, and use it for a quick gimmick. But instead, he is very thoughtful and respectful. I appreciated not just the predictably hilarious situations this experiment generated (like when tried to stone sinners by throwing pebbles at people), but also the surprising insight that Jacobs gained during his journey. I appreciated that he worked with several religious advisors and experts both before and during his experiment, and that he approached each ritual sincerely. It was all very well done.
Jacobs did have to do some mental gymnastics to deal with some of the heavier, darker rules from the bible. Sometimes he got around them with levity, like gently bopping his kid with a foam bat in lieu of beating him senseless with a rod. Sometimes he explored the less-sinister reasoning behind the weird rules, like when he explained how menstruating women being “unclean” is a misinterpretation (that being said, I can’t remember what the actual explanation was now as I write this. And I’m reminded how much I loved every single scene involving Jacobs’ wife, such as when she purposefully at on every single chair in the entire apartment while on her period so that her husband couldn’t sit. Hilarious!) But there were other rules that Jacobs just couldn’t get behind, even jokingly, such as rules against homosexuality. He talked a little bit about these, but largely glossed over them with a few sentences about his own disagreement before returning to the fun-loving positivity messaging.
The main reason this didn’t get 5 stars from me, was that I was surprised that he completely failed to mention something that to me seems absolutely essential any time bible rules are discussed: Many of the weirdest rules are from old testament books that are just listing out what the laws were for the people at that time, in that place. That doesn’t mean that current believers are expected to follow them. The new testament kinda wiped all that out. Now, Jacobs is nominally Jewish (the same way Olive Garden is Italian, using his own simile), so I assume that’s why he focused so hard on old testament rules and left the new testament for the last few months. But when he got to the new testament, he should have acknowledged that following the new testament means you can stop wearing tassles and hating gay people. That’s a pretty vital omission!
Here’s a fun afterthought: I didn’t realize until after reading the book that Jacob’s intern, Kevin, was the guy who later wrote The Unlikely Disciple. My husband and I had recommended these books to one another in the same conversation, and never realized they were so closely linked! My fear for this book, was that it would have the same shortcoming that Unlikely Disciple had; Kevin the Intern hadn’t done his homework before entering Liberty University, and treated his readers as though we were all just as ignorantly uninformed as he had been (which was condescending and annoying). Jacobs did the opposite; he checked in with real religious scholars. He did the real work. It’s a shame that didn’t rub off on his slave (er, I mean, on his intern.)
Helga without the H 