The Year of Living Biblically Part 4

"You know. In your cycle."

I paused. She looked perplexed. I decided this was a good time to avoid eye contact and study the pavement.

"Oh, you mean I might be menstruating? Don't worry, I menstruated last week."

At which point she hugged me. No escaping it.

Oddly, Rachel is not alone. A small but surprisingly vocal minority of Julie's friends have volunteered detailed information about their biological cycles. The photo editor at Esquire Esquire took the considerate step of emailing me her schedule. Did I perhaps want an Excel chart as well, she wondered? took the considerate step of emailing me her schedule. Did I perhaps want an Excel chart as well, she wondered?

I even managed to flatter this one woman I met at my sister-in-law's party. When I explained to her why I couldn't shake her hand, she told me, "Well, that's the nicest compliment I've heard in a long time." I looked at her again: gray hair, crow's feet, sixtysomething--yes, probably long past needing to worry about unplanned pregnancies.

Julie, however, is not flattered at all. She finds the whole ritual offensive. I'm not loving it either. It's one thing to avoid handshakes during flu season. But to give up all physical contact with your wife for seven days a month? It's actually quite exhausting, painful, and lonely. You have to be constantly on guard--no s.e.x, of course, but also no hand holding, no shoulder tapping, no hair tousling, no good-night kissing. When I give her the apartment keys, I drop them into her hand from a safe height of six inches.

"This is absurd," she tells me, as she unlocks the door. "It's like cooties from seventh grade. It's theological cooties."

I tell Julie that I can't pick and choose what I follow in the Bible. That'd negate the whole point of my experiment. If I'm trying to get into the mind-set of the ancient Israelites, I can't ignore even the most inconvenient or obscure rule. I also point out that I didn't send her to a red tent.

She's not amused. "I feel like a leper."

"Actually, leprosy in the Bible is a mistranslation. It's more likely a generic name for skin disease. Some even claim it's syphilis."

This is the wrong response. It's a vestigial reflex from my days as an encyclopedia-reading know-it-all: Whenever I run out of things to say, I crowbar random facts into the argument.

Julie walks out of the room. When she's annoyed, she walks with heavy, stomping footsteps. I felt magnitude-five tremors throughout the apartment.

Since I understand Julie's objection and kind of agree with it, I figure it'd be good to get some historic and cultural context. I consult my spiritual advisory board and read up on the literature. As with all of the baffling Bible rules, there is a wealth of positive spin.

First, if done properly, the no-touching ban isn't bad for your marriage. Quite the opposite. Orthodox Jews still follow a version of the original menstruation laws, and many told me they enjoy the enforced s.e.x hiatus. "It's like we get to have honeymoon s.e.x every month," said an Orthodox woman I met one day in Central Park. "It's like makeup s.e.x. You only appreciate what you have when you don't have it."

Second, avoiding your wife at this time of month is not misogynistic. It actually has to do with a reverence for life. When a woman has her period, it's like a little death. A potential life has vanished. This is a way of paying respect, like sitting shivah.

In fact, words like impurity impurity and and unclean unclean are mistranslations. Some Orthodox Jews find such terms offensive. The Hebrew word is are mistranslations. Some Orthodox Jews find such terms offensive. The Hebrew word is tumah, tumah, a state of spiritual impurity that doesn't have the same negative connotations. a state of spiritual impurity that doesn't have the same negative connotations.

(By the way, the history of impurity laws is fascinating but complex. Let me try to cram an hourlong talk I had with a rabbi into eight lines: The purity laws date from the Jerusalem temples. Back then, you had to be pure to make a sacrifice. When the Second Temple was destroyed, many of the purity laws fell out of use. Many, but not all. Jewish men still steer clear of their wives during menstruation. But they cite a different motivation: Touching might lead to s.e.x, and s.e.x during that time of the month--temple or no temple--is forbidden by another law, Leviticus 20:18. Also, to be extrasafe, the no-touching ban has been extended from a week to about twelve days. OK, finished.) None of this positive spin appeases Julie, especially since I've decided to abide by another law that makes the no-touching-impurewomen rule seem like a breeze. It's found in Leviticus 15:20: "everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean." In other words, you shouldn't lie on a bed where a menstruating woman has lain, and you can't sit on a chair where she has sat.

It's a rule that no one follows to the letter anymore. But, again, I want the ultimate ancient-Israelite experience. And it can't hurt to be pure, right?

As for not lying on unclean beds, I'm off the hook. Julie and I don't share a bed. Apparently, when I sleep, I thrash around like a beached marlin, so Julie has opted for two twin beds pushed together, a disturbing echo of my parents and early sixties sitcoms.

The no-sitting-on-impure-seats presents more of a challenge. I came home this afternoon and was about to plop down on my official seat, the gray pleather armchair in our living room.

"I wouldn't do that," says Julie.

"Why?"

"It's unclean. I sat on it." She doesn't even look up from her TiVo'd episode of Lost. Lost.

OK. Fine. Point taken. She still doesn't appreciate these impurity laws. I move to another chair, a black plastic one.

"Sat in that one, too," says Julie. "And the ones in the kitchen. And the couch in the office."

In preparation for my homecoming, she sat in every chair in the apartment, which I found annoying but also impressive. It seemed in the biblical tradition of enterprising women--like Judith, who seduced the evil general Holofernes, only to behead him when he was drunk.

I finally settle on Jasper's six-inch-high wooden bench, which she had overlooked, where I tap out emails on my PowerBook with my knees up to my chin.

The next day I do a web search and find a thirty-dollar solution to the chair problem: the Handy Seat. This is an aluminum cane that unfolds into a three-legged miniature chair. It's marketed to the elderly, as well as "individuals who suffer from asthma, arthritis, hip or leg surgery, fibromyalgia, back injury," and various other ailments.

My Handy Seat arrives a few days later, and man, do I adore it. I've started bringing it everywhere. First, it's a cane, which is sort of like a staff, which feels very biblical to me. Plus, if you think about it, every subway seat, every bus seat, every restaurant seat--almost certainly impure. The Handy Seat is the foolproof solution. It's not overly comfortable (the plastic part for sitting is only about the size of a Frisbee, and I've got minor back pain from the hunching posture it causes). And there's the inevitable problem of raised eyebrows from pa.s.sersby and scolding from lobby security guys. ("What are you doing?" asked the guard at the Time Warner Center. "Just sitting, waiting for my friend." "Well, you can't sit here. Get up.") But the Handy Seat is my little island of cleanliness. There's something safe and comforting about it.

O G.o.d, thou art my G.o.d, I seek thee . . .

--PSALMS 63:1.

Day 36. A spiritual update: I'm still agnostic. I am feeling a little more comfortable saying the word G.o.d G.o.d--thanks to sheer repet.i.tion, it no longer makes me sweat. But the anxiety has been replaced by frustration. And frankly, boredom.

The G.o.d of the Bible is an amazingly interactive deity. He's not aloof--He talks to people all the time. G.o.d spends forty days with Moses on a mountaintop telling him the commandments. G.o.d instructs Ezekiel to make bread, and even gives him a recipe of wheat, lentils, and spelt. G.o.d wrestles--physically wrestles--with Jacob on a patch of desert called Penuel. Jacob comes out of the fight with a broken hip and a new name: Israel, which means "one who was struggled with G.o.d." (Incidentally, some say it wasn't G.o.d Himself who struggled, but one of G.o.d's angels; the point is, there was contact with the divine.) I don't expect the level of interaction that the patriarchs had. I don't think G.o.d is going to put me in a quarter nelson. But I'm having trouble even sensing the presence of G.o.d.

I'm praying three times a day. In the Bible, to my surprise, there's no agreed-upon per-day prayer quota, but morning, afternoon, and night seems a safe, traditional schedule. I'm still praying with the prefabricated prayers provided by the Bible. Today I use a moving pa.s.sage from Psalms 63:1.

O G.o.d, thou art my G.o.d, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.

It's a beautiful prayer. It's got two powerful metaphors at work: first, thirsting for G.o.d, and second, loving G.o.d like a man loves his wife. And yet, despite the prayer's power, my mind wanders as I read it. "I have to remember to charge my cell phone. . . . We need more quarters for the laundry room."

A righteous man hateth lying . . .

--PROVERBS 13:5 (KJV).

Day 37. Man, do I lie a lot. I knew I lied, but when I started to keep track, the quant.i.ty was alarming. As with coveting, I try to catalog my daily violations.

A sample from today: * I lied to Julie about how much internet access at Starbucks costs. I told her eight dollars instead of ten, so she'd be 20 percent less annoyed.

* I gave a fake email address to a religious magazine called Sojourners Sojourners because I didn't want to be swamped by junk email. because I didn't want to be swamped by junk email.

* I told a friend who writes children's books that my son loved her book about cookies, even though we've never even cracked open said book about cookies.

* And I lied to kindly Mr. Berkowitz, the man who tested my clothes for mixed fibers. This I do at least once a week. Mr. Berkowitz calls--usually at eight in the morning when Julie is still asleep-- and asks if he can come over to my apartment to pray with me. If I said yes every time, he'd practically be a roommate. So I lie. "Can't today, Mr. Berkowitz. An important business meeting." "Sorry Mr. Berkowitz, I'm sick today. A throat ache, a headache, the whole thing."

I don't tell huge lies. My lies aren't of the "I don't remember that meeting, Senator" variety, or even the "I spent time in jail with my friend Leonard" variety. They're little lies. White lies. Half-truths. Sugarcoating.

I'm such an experienced liar, I once edited an article for Esquire Esquire on the art of the "noncommittal compliment." When your friend makes a movie that is just dreadful, what do you say? I gave a bunch of options, like "You've done it again!" or "I loved the credits!" on the art of the "noncommittal compliment." When your friend makes a movie that is just dreadful, what do you say? I gave a bunch of options, like "You've done it again!" or "I loved the credits!"

I've always thought that this sort of truth hedging was necessary in human relations. Without little lies, chaos would erupt. Marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered. I've seen Liar Liar Liar Liar with Jim Carrey. I know how it works. with Jim Carrey. I know how it works.

But if you take the Bible strictly, it says to avoid lying on all occasions. It says this several times. (A relevant detour: Some scholars argue that the commandment "You shall not bear false witness" should be interpreted more narrowly--it originally applied only to lying under oath. Unfortunately for liars, there are heaps of other pa.s.sages banning deceit of any kind, including Proverbs 6:17, which calls "the lying tongue" an "abomination.") In his book Why the Ten Commandments Matter, Why the Ten Commandments Matter, conservative Florida minister D. James Kennedy says my little white lies are, in fact, sins. Think of it this way: You have a date with a friend, but you just want to stay home and watch TV. You don't want to hurt her feelings, so you say you're sick. The friend comes over with a pot of chicken soup and finds you healthy. She can never trust you again. Just tell her the truth in the first place, says Dr. Kennedy. conservative Florida minister D. James Kennedy says my little white lies are, in fact, sins. Think of it this way: You have a date with a friend, but you just want to stay home and watch TV. You don't want to hurt her feelings, so you say you're sick. The friend comes over with a pot of chicken soup and finds you healthy. She can never trust you again. Just tell her the truth in the first place, says Dr. Kennedy.

So at the very least, I should cut back on lying. I decide to do this in stages. My first mission is to stop telling lies to my son, then move on from there. I lie to Jasper all the time, especially at meals. One cla.s.sic is this: "Just one more bite," I'll say. He'll take a bite. Then I'll say "OK, just one more bite." And so on.

Mind you, he's equally as deceitful. He's allowed to watch TV only when eating, so he'll try to stretch the dinner out for hours. He'll put a string bean halfway into his mouth and just dangle it there like a Marlboro Light.

I'll say "Eat, Jasper."

And then he'll gum it for a bit before stopping and getting back to the business of watching Dora explore.

My question is: Does the parent-child relationship have to be one of dishonesty? Perhaps there's something to transparent parenting.

I start it this morning. Jasper wants a bagel for breakfast. So I ask Julie where she put the bagels.

"We're out," she says. "Just give him an English m.u.f.fin and tell him that it's a bagel."

Julie says she did it yesterday, and he didn't know the difference.

So I give him a whole wheat Thomas' English m.u.f.fin.

"Bagel?" he asks, pointing to the English m.u.f.fin.

"Actually, it's not a bagel. It's an English m.u.f.fin."

He looks confused.

"It's still very good. But it's not a bagel."

As it registers that he isn't getting a bagel, his expression turns from confusion to anger to rage. He looks like someone has just circ.u.mcised him again.

"Bagel! Bagel!"

"We don't have bagels. We'll get bagels tomorrow."

Within about a minute, this has escalated into a full-blown tantrum. I'm still amazed that kids can live out cliches quite as precisely as they do. When throwing tantrums, Jasper will get down on his stomach and pound the floor with his fists and feet like he's a character in a Peanuts Peanuts cartoon. cartoon.

"What's going on here?" asks Julie. As you might have guessed, I had to tell the truth.

There are probably long-term advantages to being completely honest with your kid (he'll know he can't have his way all the time, for one thing. He'll trust you for another). But there are severe short-term disadvantages.

In the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth. --GENESIS 1:1 --GENESIS 1:1 Day 40. When I told my friend Ivan--a good Catholic--that I was considering visiting a creationist museum, he let out a loud groan. "Those people give Christianity a bad name."

I understand what he's saying. It's the way many Jews feel when we see a billboard proclaiming Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson as the Messiah. Or the way many gay men feel when they see Rip Taylor tossing a handful of confetti. It's kind of embarra.s.sing. Like Ivan, I've always taken evolution to be a cold, hard truth. As indisputable as the fact that the sun is hot or that Charles Darwin married his first cousin (the latter of which I learned in the encyclopedia and can't get out of my head).

But creationism is biblical literalism at its purest, so I need to check it out. I researched various creationist hot spots--both Jewish and Christian--and found a handful of possibilities. But nothing came close to a huge structure perched on a gentle Kentucky hill. There lies the Creation Museum, the Louvre for those who believe G.o.d made Adam less than six thousand years ago from dust. Its founders are an evangelical group called Answers in Genesis. (A note on timing: I'll be talking more with evangelicals--both conservative and liberal--in month nine when my New Testament portion begins; but since creationism is so tied to the Old Testament's Genesis, I'm doing it early.) The Creation Museum is still under construction--it's slated to open after my year ends--which is fine by me. There's something appropriate about seeing the creation of a creationist museum. So I fly down to Cincinnati, a few miles from the site.

At the airport, I realize once again how deeply biblical symbolism has seeped into every nook in my brain. As I exit, I see a strange FAA sign that warns ominously: "Don't Look Back." It doesn't say how you'd be punished if you do--I'm guessing body-cavity search, not getting turned to a pillar of salt--but I still find it a bizarre echo of G.o.d's warning to Lot as he fled the destruction of Sodom: "Do not look back."

A half hour later, I pull up to the museum--a low building fronted by thick yellow columns. In the parking lot, I spot a b.u.mper sticker of a Jesus fish gobbling up a Darwin fish.

I'm greeted by publicist Mark Looy, a gray-haired man with a gentle schoolteacher voice, who guides me to a door that lets us into the lobby. The lobby is, in a word, awesome.

The museum is still a work in progress. Hard hats everywhere, the smell of sawdust, the whine of drills. But even in its unfinished state, you can tell this is going to send the media into a Michael Jackson-trial-like frenzy.

The first thing I see is a life-size diorama of an Eden-like scene. There's a waterfall, a stream, and cypress trees. An animatronic caramel-skinned cave girl giggles and c.o.c.ks her head to look straight at me, which is odd and impressive and disturbing all at once. She's playing awfully close to a fierce-looking razor-toothed T. rex. Don't worry, Mark tells me. In the beginning, humans and dinosaurs lived together in harmony. The T. Rex's scary incisors are for coconuts and fruit, just like pandas' teeth.

When the museum opens, the Answers in Genesis folks expect thousands of visitors. And it'll probably get them--polls say that as many as 45 percent of Americans believe in creationism. Not intelligent design. We're talking strict the-earth-is-less-than-ten-thousand-years-old creationism. (The creationists I met scoffed at intelligent design, the theory that the world was designed by a superior being, but not necessarily in seven literal days. The creationists think of this as some sort of nebulous theological mumbo jumbo.) Mark introduces me to Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis. Ken is a wiry and energetic fifty-six-year-old with a gray Vand.y.k.e beard. Ken quizzes me about my last book, the one about reading the encyclopedia, and I end up telling him about my ill-fated appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I was stumped by the question "What is an erythrocyte?" I was stumped by the question "What is an erythrocyte?"

"It's a red blood cell," says Ken.

He's right. I'm thrown off guard. A creationist who trumps me in science knowledge--that's unexpected and unsettling.

Ken was born to religious parents in Queensland, Australia, and still has a thick Aussie accent despite his twenty years in America. We start walking through the rooms. "The guy who designed the museum also designed the Jaws Jaws attraction at the Universal theme park," Ken says. And it shows. The place is professional. We stroll past more than a dozen robotic dinosaurs. A statue of Eve, with her flowing hair placed conveniently over her pert b.r.e.a.s.t.s. A partly built ark. A room with a circular slope like New York's Guggenheim Museum, a subtle reminder of man's fall from paradise. A theater with sprinklers to simulate the flood. A huge crocodile (a prop from the secular movie attraction at the Universal theme park," Ken says. And it shows. The place is professional. We stroll past more than a dozen robotic dinosaurs. A statue of Eve, with her flowing hair placed conveniently over her pert b.r.e.a.s.t.s. A partly built ark. A room with a circular slope like New York's Guggenheim Museum, a subtle reminder of man's fall from paradise. A theater with sprinklers to simulate the flood. A huge crocodile (a prop from the secular movie Crocodile Dundee Crocodile Dundee). The future home of a talking Saint Paul robot. A medieval castle-themed bookstore. Medieval? Because the dragons of medieval times were actually still-living dinosaurs.

As we pa.s.s by the statue of a Roman centurion and the currently headless giraffe, I ask Ken the questions he's been asked a thousand times.

If Adam and Eve gave birth to two boys, Cain and Abel, how did Cain and Abel have kids?

"That's an easy one. Adam and Eve didn't just have Cain and Abel. It says in Genesis 5:4 that Adam had 'other sons and daughters.'"

When it says "day," does that mean a literal twenty-four-hour day?

"Yes. You've got to go back to the original word in Hebrew, which is yom. yom. It's the same word that's used for a twenty-four-hour day. If you don't take that to mean 'day,' it's a slippery slope." It's the same word that's used for a twenty-four-hour day. If you don't take that to mean 'day,' it's a slippery slope."

What about scientific dating that says the world is millions of years old?

"Ninety percent of age-dating methods are faulty."

Which version of the Bible do you use?

"Usually the King James. But you have to be careful with translations."

Ken explains that, for instance, many versions say the rabbit "chews its cud" (Leviticus 11:6). "The skeptics say the rabbit doesn't chew its cud. But you look at the original language, it says 'the rabbit re-eats its food.' And look at what a rabbit does. It excretes rabbit pellets and then eats the pellets. The Bible is correct."

We walk into a room with a brick wall covered with menacing-looking graffiti. This room is devoted to modern ills, among them drugs and racism. "There is only one race, the human race," says Ken.

The creationists I meet are surprisingly liberal on race matters. Racial intermarriage is considered just fine. In fact, they think that Darwin's theory can lead to racism because minorities are sometimes seen as lower forms of h.o.m.o sapiens on the evolutionary scale. They are also progressive on Darfur. On other topics--including abortion and gay marriage--they are down-the-line conservatives.

We pa.s.s a dinosaur with a saddle on it. This display was mocked by my own magazine--Esquire--which called it a dressage dinosaur because of the English saddle. Ken downplays it. "It's just a novelty. Just something for the kids." He ushers me through. "This way, A. J." (That's one thing I notice: They say "A. J." here a lot. It seems common among certain types of very religious people to say your name all the time. It makes me think of G.o.d's first words to Moses, which were "Moses, Moses!" but it's probably unrelated.) Speaking of dinosaurs, if they really were on the ark, as creationists claim, how did Noah squeeze them all in?

"He put them in when they were younger and smaller. The equivalent of teenagers."

I later bought a paperback at the museum bookstore called Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, which spends three hundred pages outlining the brilliant engineering that made the boat possible. There are chapters on the ark's ventilation system, methods of onboard exercise for the animals, and the myth of explosive manure gases. which spends three hundred pages outlining the brilliant engineering that made the boat possible. There are chapters on the ark's ventilation system, methods of onboard exercise for the animals, and the myth of explosive manure gases.

The book is beautifully argued--and I don't believe a syllable of it. Which I know is counter to my quest. I had told Mark the publicist that I was coming in with an open mind, but while down here, I realize my mind won't open that far. I can understand being open to the existence of G.o.d and the beauty of rituals and the benefits of prayer. But the existence of a juvenile brontosaurus on the ark? And an earth that's barely older than Gene Hackman? I have to go with 99 percent of scientists on this one.

Of course, the creationists cite plenty of scientific evidence of their own. Or more precisely, they interpret the same evidence as being proof of creationism. Mark told me about a T. rex bone in Montana that broke open and had blood vessels. No way that could be millions of years old, he said.

The article Esquire Esquire ran was called "Greetings from Idiot America," and it was very funny. But I have to disagree with the headline. The Answers in Genesis folks aren't idiots. And despite a British news show that scored its segment with ran was called "Greetings from Idiot America," and it was very funny. But I have to disagree with the headline. The Answers in Genesis folks aren't idiots. And despite a British news show that scored its segment with Deliverance Deliverance-style banjo music, they aren't hillbillies. Everyone I met had a full set of well-orthodontured teeth and blinked at regular intervals. I can't prove it, but I'd wager there's no difference in the average IQ of creationists and evolutionists.

The thing is, their faith in the literal Bible is so strong, they will squeeze and distort all data to fit the Genesis account. In fact, you have to be quite sharp to be a leading creationist. The mental gymnastics can be astonishing.

Consider AiG's resident astrophysicist, Jason Lisle. Mark introduced me to him proudly. "A real, live PhD who believes in creationism. Here he is, in 3-D."

Jason has meticulously parted hair, looks a bit like Paul Reubens, and is sweet in an unforced way. He tells me it wasn't easy being a creationist PhD student. He had to stay closeted about his beliefs and write for the AiG magazine under a pseudonym.