Your ‘Year of Living Biblically’ Sucks Balls

If you haven’t seen this histrionic bizzatch around the internet yet, Rachel Held Evans is a blogger who wanted a book deal for doing something zany so she decided to “live biblically for a year.” Which basically meant that she was going to do a plain reading of the old testament and follow some rules set in a specific historical time and culture and ignore the theological interpretations of the new testament as a timeless covenant replacing an older covenant with a specific group of people in history.

As you can tell, I really don’t care for this woman. Not because she’s a future cover model for Twee Bitch Magazine but because she is purporting to do something she hasn’t attempted to do at all and cashing in on it.

I wanted to challenge the idea that “biblical womanhood” could be reduced to a list of roles and rules, and I wanted to do it in a creative, disarming way. I was thinking about this in the shower one morning, when I got a crazy idea: What if I tried it all? What if took the notion of biblical womanhood literally to show that it’s not as simple as it may sound?

As a result, I found myself growing out my hair, making my own clothes, caring for a computerized baby named Chip, consulting with Orthodox Jews, travelling to Amish country, interviewing a real “sister wife,” sitting on my roof, covering my head, and calling my husband “master.”

I just don’t understand what any of this has to do with living biblically. Like, I don’t want to tell you how to be part of a religion I am not a part of… but in light of you know, what the bible says, shouldn’t you be feeding the poor and caring for orphans in your home instead of spending your day on Etsy trying to figure out how to sew a cool dress?

IDK just feel sad about spirituality when its boiled down to something so stupid.

The reason I hate the Christian right is because they do things like this. Focus on the Family is big into spanking your children because it’s biblical. Except if you read the bible you’ll see that the command is to take your child in the public square and beat them. The purpose of spanking is to punish, not to inflict a great deal of physical pain. So, what you are drawing from the bible is what you want and what is socially acceptable and not what you claim it is at all.

Just stop grand standing. Try to find something you really believe in and you don’t have to lie to yourself about. Failing, at least try to help other people or something useful.