How to Be Perfect
One Church's Audacious Experiment In Living the Old Testament Book of Leviticus
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Influenced by A. J. Jacobs's The Year of Living Biblically, Harrell managed to recruit 20 members of his Boston congregation to join him in a month-long effort at living Levitically. Holiness was the ultimate goal, but so was learning.
People who take the Bible seriously never know what to do with the book of Leviticus. And yet Leviticus is historically considered by Jews, and thus by Jesus, as the pivotal book of the Hebrew Bible. It's impossible to fully comprehend such key New Testament terms as sacrifice, atonement, or blood without some understanding of Leviticus. The "second greatest commandment," which Jesus said was "Love your neighbor as yourself," comes from Leviticus (19:18).
As a longtime minister and preacher who had successfully skirted Leviticus for most of his life, author Daniel Harrell wanted to come to grips with all that Leviticus teaches -- not just loving neighbors, but the parts about animal sacrifice, Sabbath-keeping, skin diseases, homosexuality, and stoning sinners, too. Yet rather than approaching Leviticus with a view toward mitigating its commands, he decided to simply obey them.
The surprising lessons they learned impressed on Harrell both the power of obedience and the necessity of grace. This book traces the adventures of a group of people eager to understand the Bible by living it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The often baffling book of laws for Jewish priests known as Leviticus is typically dismissed by Christians as outdated legalese no longer binding on people of the New Testament. Harrell, who served as pastor of the evangelical Park Street Church in downtown Boston for 23 years, doesn t let that get in the way of his sincere desire to understand God and the Bible in its entirety. Inspired by a secular experiment that became the successful book The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, Harrell proposes a one-month experiment to live levitically. Eighteen church members join him in a quest to be holy because I, the Lord your God, am Holy, as the text repeatedly intones. The result is a series of reflections by Harrell and his followers many communicating with each other via a Facebook page dedicated to the project on keeping the Sabbath, abstaining from pork, and refraining from sexual deviancy as the Bible defines it. The resulting pastiche of responses is, for the most part, generous, compassionate, and thoughtful. This book will be appreciated not for its historical understanding of Judaism but for its attempt at living devotionally.
