The year showed me beyond a doubt that everyone practices cafeteria religion... But the important lesson was this: there's nothing wrong with choosing. Cafeterias aren't bad per se... the key is in choosing the right dishes. You need to pick the nurturing ones (compassion), the healthy ones (love thy neighbor), not the bitter ones.
A. J. JacobsA 2002 Oxford study showed counting sheep actually delays the onset of sleep. It's just too dull to stop us from worrying about jobs and spouses.
A. J. JacobsThe whole bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man. God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relationship at all. No real relationship goes just one way. There are always two active parties. We must have reverence and awe for God, and honor for the chain of tradition. But that doesn't mean we can't use new information to help us read the holy texts in new ways.
A. J. JacobsI always thought the name of Utahโs major newspaper was some sort of weird misspelling of the word โdesert.โ But no, Deseret is the โland of the honeybee,โ according to the Book of Mormon. I guess I should have figured they would have caught a typo in the masthead after 154 years.
A. J. Jacobs