by A. J. Jacobs
“They used to be racehorses,” says Amos, patting one on the neck. “Ninety percent of the horses the Amish have were once racehorses.”
This is the only time during the weekend that Amos approached being prideful. Humility is absolutely central to the Amish way of life, and it’s one of the most beautiful things about the community. But if you’re going to be proud of anything, I figure these horses are a pretty good choice.
Amos grew up in this house, he tells us.
“What was your childhood like?”
“It was cold. There was no insulation, so it got to be two below in our room.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Two below the covers.”
This time he can’t suppress the corners of his mouth from turning slightly upward. That was definitely a gag.
Back in the kitchen, I ask about his kids. He has seven, all of them still Amish, many of them living nearby or even across the street. Before coming, I had read that the Amish population in America—now at almost two hundred thousand—had doubled in the last twenty years. They are in no danger of fading away.
“Are there a lot of conversions to the Amish faith?”
“Very few.” Amos pauses, then says: “Do you want to hear an Amish joke?”
“Sure.”
This is great. The Amish have been an easy go-to punch line for far too long. In fact, I almost didn’t come to Amish country because I didn’t want to fall into the trap. So it’ll be a delight to hear an Amish joke from an actual Amish person.
“What happened when the Mennonite man married the Amish woman?”
Julie and I don’t know.
“She drove him buggy.”
We laugh. It’s not Chris Rock, but you have to remember: Amos is working with some pretty stringent preconditions.
“Ba-dum-bum,” says Julie.
I wonder if the rim-shot reference made any sense to him, or if he just thought Julie makes odd sounds.
I try to bring up spirituality once more. I tell him that the Book of Amos is one of my favorite parts in the Bible. Again, silence. For a long thirty seconds.
“Do you know ‘Amazing Grace’?” he finally says.
We nod.
“Help us out then.”
Amos fishes a harmonica out of his pocket, takes a deep breath, and starts playing the most astounding version of the hymn I’ve ever heard. He was working that harmonica, his hand flapping, playing notes on both the inhale and the exhale.
Julie and I fumble the words a bit in the middle, but we end strong: “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”
“Do you play at church?” I ask when he stops.
“No, we don’t play instruments,” he says. “It might encourage pride. You might get some thoughts. Try to show off for other people.”
Amos holds up his harmonica. “This is just for home use.”
A pause. “Well, I best get moving,” says Amos. “Supper is at five-thirty.”
And with that, Amos disappears into his dining room.
Julie and I drive to a local tourist-trap restaurant that serves butter-soaked vegetables and shoofly pie. On the way, we see another startling sight, right up there with the leaf blower: It is an Amish teen, his hands behind his back, Rollerblading leisurely down a country road.
I found out later that some of the Amish allow Rollerblades. Rubber tires are forbidden, so bikes are out, but Rollerblade wheels are made of plastic. Likewise, though electricity is banned, tools using batteries, solar power, or gas are sometimes OK. Hence the leaf blower.
The lesson from my weekend with the Amish is this: You cannot stop religion from evolving. Even here, where customs and dress were supposedly frozen in the sixteenth century, they will still find a way. It makes my quest to rewind my life to biblical times that much more daunting. Can I really scrape off all those millennia of accumulated tradition?
Before we arrive at the restaurant, Julie and I spot a cluster of about thirty buggies. We pull over to see what’s happening. We have stumbled onto an Amish baseball game. Amos tells us that many Amish—him included—discourage competitive sports.
But here are eighteen Amish teenage boys, their sleeves rolled up, their shirts and suspenders dark with sweat. Julie and I watch for a long time. These kids are good, but something is off about the game. I realize after a few minutes what it is: This is the quietest baseball game I’ve ever seen. No trash talk. No cheering from the parents in the stands. Near silence, except for the occasional crack of the bat. It is eerie and peaceful and beautiful.
Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord…
—2 CHRONICLES 30:8
Day 13. Back in New York, the Bible is keeping me overscheduled. The mornings are particularly crammed. I have to attach my tassels. Say my prayers. Tie a Xeroxed copy of the Ten Commandments to my forehead and hand in accordance with Exodus 13:9 (more on that later). The rest of the day is consumed with Bible study, midday prayer, perhaps a good deed, biblical shopping (today I plan to buy a wooden staff), a few hours devoted to secular Esquire matters, a scripturally approved dinner, then prayers at night.
Oh, and my spiritual advisory board. I try to meet or talk with at least one sage per day. Today is a doubleheader. It starts with breakfast with my friend Roger Bennett.
Roger is a Liverpudlian who ends all conversations with “Rock on.” He has about eight jobs—writer, documentarian, foundation head, and so on—most of which have at least a vague connection to religion.
Roger doesn’t mind that my morning rituals made me ten minutes late, but he does want to tell me something: “You’re going into this thinking that it’s like studying the sumo wrestlers in Japan,” Roger says. “You’re saying to yourself, ‘I won’t really become one. I’ll maintain my distance.’”
I start to protest. Roger continues.
“You’re dealing with explosive stuff. People a lot smarter than you have devoted their lives to this. So you have to admit there is a possibility that you will be profoundly changed by the end.”
He could be right. And it scares me. I hate losing control. I like to be in command of everything. My emotions, for instance. If I’m watching a love story, and I start to get too weepy, I’ll say to myself: “OK, there’s a boom mike right over Audrey Hepburn’s head; see if you can spot its shadow,” and that’ll snap me out of the movie, and I’ll regain my composure. I also spend a lot of time trying to control my health, mostly by fixating on germs. I have a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder (a disease that has, I’m afraid, become a bit trendy, thanks to Larry David, et al.). My medicine cabinet is packed with a dozen bottles of Purell at all times. I haven’t touched a subway pole with my bare hands in a decade—I usually just plant my feet wide apart in the subway car and pretend I’m a surfer.
The problem is, a lot of religion is about surrendering control and being open to radical change. I wish I could stow my secular worldview in a locker at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and retrieve it at the end of the year.
After breakfast with Roger, I take a subway downtown to have lunch with the Brooklyn rabbi Andy Bachman at a diner. It’s back-to-back mentoring today. Andy’s easy to relate to. He also grew up in a secular home, though that home was in Wisconsin (Jews there are known as the “frozen chosen,” by the way). He was drawn to religion when he first saw the beautiful typography of the Talmud. He’s youngish, forty-two, and insists I call him Andy, which seems disrespectful, but I try.
“How’s it going?” asks Andy.
I tell Andy about Mr. Berkowitz and the mixed-fiber inspection.
“I was riveted,” I say. Maybe too riveted, actually. I know myself. I’m drawn to the weird. In my last book, on the encyclopedia, I made seven references to philosopher René Descartes’s fetish for cross-eyed women, which I think and hope is a record.
“I’m worried I could spend the whole year on the strange parts of the Bible and neglect the parts about goo
dness and justice,” I say.
Andy thinks about it for a half minute. He takes a sip of coffee.
“My advice is: Don’t forget the prophets.”
The prophets, he explains, are twenty extraordinary men and women found in the Hebrew Scriptures. They come onto the scene several hundred years after the age of Moses. By then, the Israelites were living in the Promised Land, but they’d botched it all up. They’d gotten corrupt and lazy. They were oppressing the poor just like their former masters in Egypt. The prophets were the Martin Luther Kings of their day, railing against the crooked system. Not so coincidentally, MLK liked to quote them—including Amos’s amazing words: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream!”
“Try to make everything you do measure up to the moral standards of the prophets,” Andy told me. “Remember what Micah said. He said that the animal sacrifices weren’t important. The important thing is to ‘Do justice. And to love mercy. And to walk humbly with your God.’”
…and he gave him a tenth of all.
—GENESIS 14:20 (JPS)
Day 14. Andy’s correct, of course. I have to be more moral. I have to do something that would please the prophets. The next morning, I flip through my list of rules and find an excellent candidate on page twenty-eight: Give away 10 percent of your income.
“I’m going to tithe,” I announce to Julie over breakfast.
She seems concerned. In general, she’s much more magnanimous than I am. She’s a sucker for those charities that send you free sheets of return-address labels with little cartoons of a Rollerblading Ziggy, along with a heartbreaking brochure about lymphoma. I tell her it’s emotional blackmail. She ignores me and mails them checks.
But even for Julie 10 percent is high, especially with Jasper and, we hope, another kid to come. She asks me whether I can count my literary agent’s fee as a tithe. She’s only half-joking.
Unfortunately, I doubt even the most brilliant rabbi could figure out a way to classify International Creative Management as “the poor” (especially after the agents raised their commission to 15 percent a few years ago).
“Can you at least do 10 percent after taxes?” she says.
That night, I call my spiritual advisory board to ask. I reach Elton Richards, the pastor out to pasture.
“You shouldn’t get too legalistic with it,” says Elton. “Give what you can afford. And then give some more. It should feel like a sacrifice.”
I study my Bible for insight. It seems that in the time of ancient Israel—before the Romans took over—no one paid taxes per se. The tithes were the taxes. And the tithing system was as complicated as any 1040 form. You gave portions to the priests, the temple keepers, the temple itself, the poor, the widows, and the orphans. So, I suppose, at least for now, after-tax tithing is probably OK.
I calculate 10 percent of my projected salary. It’s not a huge number—but that’s precisely the problem. If I were making $10 million a year and had to give away one million, that’d be easier.
That night I spend three hours browsing a website called Charity Navigator. It’s sort of a Zagat guide to aid organizations. (Even this leads to coveting—they list the salaries of these charity CEOs, and some break $500,000.)
I settle on several organizations—Feed the Children and Save Darfur among them—and donate about 2 percent of my income. That’s as much as I can do in one shot.
When the confirmation emails ping in, I feel good. There’s a haunting line from the film Chariots of Fire. It’s spoken by Eric Liddell, the most religious runner, the one who carries a Bible with him during his sprint. He says: “When I run, I feel His pleasure.” And as I gave away money, I think I might have felt God’s pleasure. I know: I’m agnostic. But still—I feel His pleasure. It’s a warm ember that starts at the back of my neck and spreads through my skull. I feel like I am doing something I should have been doing all my life.
On the other hand, like a hard sprint, the pleasure is mixed with pain. I have just carved off 2 percent of my salary, and I’ve got 8 percent left to go. So here’s the mental strategy I’ve adopted: If it weren’t for the Bible, I wouldn’t be living a biblical year. I wouldn’t have a book deal. No Bible, no income. So it’s only fair to give 10 percent to God’s people. It’s the most righteous finder’s fee around.
He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
—PROVERBS 13:24
Day 23. As I mentioned, one of my motivations for this experiment is my recent entrance into fatherhood. I’m constantly worried about my son’s ethical education. I don’t want him to swim in this muddy soup of moral relativism. I don’t trust it. I have such a worldview, and though I have yet to commit a major felony, it seems dangerous. Especially nowadays. Within a couple of years, Jasper will be able to download Tijuana donkey shows on YouTube while ordering OxyContin from an offshore pharmacy.
So I want to instill some rock-solid, absolute morals in my son. Would it be so bad if he lived by the Ten Commandments? Not at all. But how do I get him there?
This morning, it’s clearer than ever that I need help. I’m exhausted, a direct result of the fact that I’m the worst disciplinarian in America.
At about 2:00 a.m. Jasper woke up, so I let him climb into bed with me and Julie—already a sucker move. Instead of lulling him to sleep, this gave him lots of new activities. For instance, grabbing my sleep mask, pulling it away from my eyes till the elastic band is fully extended—a length of about two feet—then releasing it. The mask would shoot back onto my face with alarming force, producing an eye-watering snap. (Note: Contrary to what you might think, my sleep mask does not violate the Bible’s prohibition against wearing women’s clothes. It came in a box featuring a photo of a very masculine and well-rested man sleeping next to his attractive wife.)
I told Jasper to stop, but my tone was about as menacing as Fred Rogers. So he did it again and again.
This is probably unbiblical. At the very least, my leniency is a violation of the Proverbs. The Proverbs are the Bible’s collection of wisdom attributed to King Solomon, and they come down clearly on the side of disciplining kids. As in corporal punishment.
Proverbs 22:15: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child; but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”
Proverbs 23:14: “Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.” (KJV)
Proverbs 23:13: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.”
Some Americans hew to these proverbs literally. Until 2005 you could buy “The Rod,” a twenty-two-inch nylon whipping stick that sold for five dollars. It was the creation of an Oklahoma-based Southern Baptist named Clyde Bullock, who advertised it with the motto “Spoons are for cooking, belts are for holding up pants, hands are for loving, and rods are for chastening.” He shut down the business partly because of an outcry from more liberal Christians and partly because he couldn’t buy its cushioned grips anymore.
Other not-quite-as-literal literalists say paddles are an acceptable alternative. James Dobson—founder of Focus on the Family, the ultraconservative Christian group—recommends paddling, especially if you want to keep your hand as “an object of love.”
I don’t own a rod or a paddle. In fact, corporal punishment of any sort is deeply counter to my parenting philosophy. I’ve always considered walloping your kid the H-bomb of childcare—it’s in the arsenal but shouldn’t be deployed.
Even for Project Bible, I can’t deploy it. At least not yet. I’ve reached my first limit. So what to do? I decided this is one of those times when I should fulfill the letter of the law, if not the spirit. It’s better than fulfilling nothing at all.
A few days ago I Googled “flexible rod” and “soft rod,” and, after sifting through several biblically questionable ads, I ended up ordering a very unmenacing Nerf bat. I try it today on Jasper. After dinner, he grabs a handful of nickels off the dresse
r and chucks them across the room.
So I take the Nerf bat and smack Jasper’s butt with it. I’ve never spanked him before, despite several temptations to do otherwise. When I swing my bat—even though it’s spongy and harmless—I break some sort of barrier. I have now punished my son physically. It’s an unsettling feeling. It drives home just how lopsided the relationship is: Parents have God-like physical dominance over their kids, at least when those kids have yet to hit puberty.
Jasper seems undisturbed by all this. He responds by laughing hysterically, grabbing his Wiffle bat, and attempting to smack me back. So I’m basically sanctioning violence here.
The rod is a fiasco. But here’s the thing: I agree with the gist of Proverbs. I need to discipline my son more. I need to give Jasper some tough love, dispense more time-outs, or risk having him turn into a three-foot-tall monster. Julie has become the family disciplinarian, which is causing tension in our marriage, as she’s not fond of being the bad cop. I’ve got to get stricter.
Look at the example set by God. The God of the Bible treats his children—the human race—with both justice and mercy. Right now, I’m out of whack; I’m 10 percent justice and 90 percent mercy. If I had been in charge of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve would have gotten three strikes, then a fourth, then a stern warning, then had their bedtime moved up twenty minutes. God, as you know, kicked them out. As a sign of His compassion, he clothed them in animal skins before the eviction, but He still kicked them out.
Make me understand the way of thy precepts, and I will meditate on thy wondrous works.
—PSALMS 119:27
Day 30. It’s the end of month one. Physically I feel okay. The beard’s itchiness has receded, and, at least for the moment, it looks more comparative-literature-professor than guy-who-stopped-taking-his-meds.
As for my spiritual life, the word that comes to mind is disconnected. I’ve been playing the role of the Bible Man for a month, but that’s what it still feels like: a role. A character. Like the time at summer camp when I was twelve, and, for reasons I no longer remember, I adopted a deep Southern accent—a real Foghorn Leghorn twang—and spoke it exclusively for a month.