Thus Endeth a Month of (sort of) Living Levitically

It's past midnight now* and my Month of Living Levitically is nearly at an end. I've been reckoning the start of each day with dawn (I thought that would be an interesting twist since each day in Judaism ends with sundown), so it's not quite over for me for a few more hours. In the morning, though, I can finally shave off or at least trim this beard before I start looking any more like Jeremiah Johnson and perhaps start off the day with a nice breakfast of bacon, continue it with a bacon-based lunch, and perhaps compliment the evening with some manner of bacon-themed dinner.

You probably think I'm kidding.

Anyway, with the whole thing coming to an end, one of the things we're supposed to be doing is contemplating what we've seen/learned/experienced this month. Some of the folks in the experiment have had some really cool and profound experiences--if you're on Facebook, I highly recommend checking out the Living Leviticus group and seeing some of the posts from the people there.

For me personally there have been no earth-shattering moments, but there has definitely been one clear overarcing aspect to it all, namely: I never before realized just how good I am at detaching God from my day-to-day life.

It's interesting, really--I'd consider myself a habitual pray-er, someone who pretty frequently says little prayers (usually just mentally, occasionally aloud) to God, thanking Him for random good stuff in my life (my health, my youth while it lasts, my job, a pleasantly warm sunny day or an enjoyably melancholy gray day...whatever happens to strike me as a blessing at any given time) or perhaps asking for something, or sometimes just questioning what "His will" is for one part of my life another. And yet for the stretches of time in between these bursts of prayer--particularly times when I'm busy working on something--I manage not to think about God at all.

Now, talking to God is great. Apart from the irreverent nature of many of my prayers possibly being a bad thing, I don't think there's anything wrong with praying to God often and over any manner of different things. It's just that prayer alone isn't enough, and perhaps doesn't mean so much if you're not also regularly evaluating the things you're saying and doing in your life in the context of God's Law. After all, Jesus said very clearly said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15)

Normally I'd like to think I'm a fairly moral person. I try (very hard, believe it or not) to be kind, honest, just, humble, etc. There was a short span of time late in high school when I got especially rabid about it and actually tried to keep TRACK of my daily sins and good deeds in a small blue notebook**--fortunately sanity kicked in after a while and I stopped, but I assure you that trying this for even a short time can be an eye-opening experience as to how bad a person most of us really are during a disturbingly large chunk of our days. The good part about my morality-tracking experiment was that it forced me to think about what I was doing far more often and more clearly than I normally would--it's so easy, at least for me, to just sort of coast through life without thinking too much about what exactly you're doing. "Living deliberately," as Thoreau might put it, is considerably more difficult and consumes a lot more mental and emotional energy.

Doing this Leviticus experiment has been a similar experience for me in many respects to my time with the Little Blue Notebook of Good and Evil™, both the part where I'm regularly reminded how much I fall short of the mark and in the part where I find myself thinking about God more on a moment-to-moment basis and in general living more deliberately. Put on my clothes in the morning and check the labels to see what they're made of and whether or not I'm combining wool and linen (Leviticus 19:19). Run my hand over my increasingly-furry chin and I'm reminded of the restrictions against shaving (Leviticus 19:27). Sit down to eat and I have to turn on my brain to think about what I'm ordering and whether or not it contains any pork products or shellfish, etc (Leviticus 11). Sunday rolls around and I have to remember to suppress my workaholic tendencies and not so much as check my work Email all day long (for the purposes of this experiment, I treated Sunday rather than Saturday as my Sabbath).

In spite of all that, which definitely kept me very much on my toes at the beginning of the month, it didn't take long to start losing steam. I managed to avoid pork and shellfish for the whole month (why, in the name of all that's right and good in this world, must pepperoni contain pork??), and I've not shaved or cut my hair either. I've completely avoided mixing wool and linen or working on the Sabbath (though some people's definition of "work" would be far more stringent than mine was, I'm sure). That's swell. But a prayer of thanks before each meal (not explicitly in Leviticus, but still something I set out to do this month)? I managed that periodically at first, then got a bit better at remembering to do it, then completely lost it altogether and gave up. But forget all these clearly evident items--what about the billions of less obvious ones that we do so often we generally don't even notice a bump in the road? A little "white" lie here, some "harmless" gossip there, a somewhat lustful glance at that girl across from you in the subway...all that normal everyday muck. I've not escaped it in the slightest.

~*~

I imagine you're expecting a conclusion right about now, but I'm afraid I don't have much of one. Please don't get the impression that I'm feeling defeated or depressed regarding my various failures to live up to the standards set in Leviticus (and all throughout Scripture). I'm not. At this point in my life I don't find it especially shocking to see my moral failings. Rather, I recognize that the best I can do is always strive to do better, and occasionally learn a thing or two that helps me in that attempt.

In this instance, what I've learned is that a study of the Old Testament Law--either in part or in whole--may seem like a waste of time when you're in the fairly common modern-Christian mindset that all that stuff's been done away with and "all you need is Jesus," but it has a very real and tangible value in that (for a limited time, at least) it can help you to "live deliberately," with greater vigilance, keeping God more frequently in mind, and more easily remembering the concept of holiness within your day on a moment to moment basis. And I'd say that makes a study of Leviticus--or perhaps Exodus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy--more than worth it for any Christian.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed. I think I feel a dream about bacon coming on...

* If this post seems unusually fuzzy or meandering even by Ian Frazier standards, please note that I'm typing this sentence at 4:20 AM and my brain is now nearly liquefied from sleep deprivation.

** As a related note, one of the other participants in Living Leviticus has tried doing something very much like this over the course of this month. I'll be really interested to hear her thoughts on it after a month of trying it.