by A. J. Jacobs
Ignoring a rebellious son is, coincidentally, a strategy recommended by a secular parenting book I read months ago. So I put him on the ground, turn my back to him, and cross my arms. I look like a model posing for the label on the Mr. Clean bottle.
He starts to whimper.
"Say you're sorry, and we can go play," I say.
"No."
"No hitting people," I say. I say it with decisiveness, confident that I have thousands of years of tradition behind me.
I keep my back to him. He grabs my leg.
"A. J.!" he says. "A. J.! A. J.!"
There's something ineffably heartbreaking about a two-year-old calling to his father, and the father not answering. And I am that father. It's killing me. But Jasper is still too stubborn to say he's sorry.
The Bible talks about the importance of punishing your kids if you love them. And I think there's something to that paradoxical advice. The best punishment should be a sacrifice--you sacrifice a pleasant afternoon, you sacrifice some in-the-moment affection, to give them a better future.
Jasper stomps, he sulks, he mutters to himself. It's the longest fight we've had. Finally, four hours later, he tracks me down in the living room and gives me a sad little downcast-eyes "Sorry."
"Great!" I say. "I'm so proud of you for apologizing. What should we play?"
But Jasper would not be playing with me tonight. He would play alone. He goes to bed all mopey and martyrlike. It probably sounds like a minor skirmish, but for me the War of the Bowling Pin was an epic one. The next morning at about seven-fifteen, I hear Jasper screaming into the monitor: "A. J.! A. J.!" I open his door, stick my head in. I pick him up, he gives me a grudge-free hug around the neck. Yes, our relationship survived my dispensation of justice. It's a good lesson for me. I still spare the rod, but I'm trying not to spoil the child.
Month Ten: June
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place . . .
--EPHESIANS 5:4 (NIV)
Day 277. "How was the birthday party?" I ask Julie.
She and Jasper had just returned from a party at a preschool on the
East Side.
"OK. But they had this rabbit for the kids to pet, and there was rabbit shit everywhere."
"Huh."
I am shocked at her language. And then I am shocked that I am
shocked. When I first met Julie, she rarely cursed, whereas I had no filter whatsoever. I chose a particularly adolescent curse word as my default computer password. I enjoyed watching TV with the closed
captioning, because the captioners sometimes type in the dirty words
that are bleeped out for the apparently more delicate hearing-unimpaired community.
But for the last two months, inspired by Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians, I haven't used a single naughty word. And it startles
me when others do.
What is a biblically naughty word? Well, there are two genres: blasphemy and profanity. Blasphemy is the subject of the Third Commandment, which orders us not to take the Lord's name in vain. What does it
mean to take the Lord's name in vain? Is it when you say the word God
in any secular context? Or is it only when you invoke God's name while
lying under oath? Or is it uttering the word Yahweh, which might come
close to the pronunciation of God's holy name? All three theories have
their supporters.
If you want to be supremely safe, as I do, you should use the word
God only when praying or talking about the Bible.
As for profanity--the S-word and the F-word and regular old bodilyfunction-themed cussing--things are even less clear. In fact, as science
writer Natalie Angier points out, the Bible itself uses some adult language. In 2 Kings 18:27 the men "eat their own dung and drink their own
piss."(KJV) In Ezekiel 23:20, you can read some very salty language
about the size of Egyptian men's private parts.
Still, there are sections, especially in the New Testament, that indicate such language should be avoided. Consider the passage from Ephesians I put at the top of this chapter: "Nor should there be any obscenity,
foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place." Or this one from
Ephesians 4:29 (NIV): "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of
your mouths."
So to be totally protected, I've scrubbed up my vocabulary. My current curse words are: fudge, sugar, and shoot. When I say one of my new
curse words, Julie usually responds with something like, "Hey, Opie!
You going fishin' this morning?" Or just whistling The Andy Griffith
Show theme.
She can mock me, but the weird thing is, I think my G-rated language
is making me a less angry person. Because here's the way it works: I'll get to the subway platform just as the downtown train is pulling
away, and I'll start to say the F-word. I'll remember to censor myself. So
I'll turn it into "fudge" at the last second. When I hear myself say "fudge"
out loud, it sounds so folksy, so Jimmy Stewart-ish and amusingly dorky,
that I can't help but smile. My anger recedes. Once again, behavior
shapes emotions.
"Fudge" seems clearly within bounds, but what about words like
"heck"? Those are more morally ambiguous, but probably should be
avoided as well. In the 1600s "criminy" was considered a curse word for
being too close to "Christ." Same with "gosh" and "golly" in the 1700s,
which were meant to evoke God and God's body, respectively. Later,
"Jiminy Cricket" and "Gee Willikers" were wicked code words for Jesus.
"Tarnation" began as an offensive combination of "eternal" and "damnation." And "heck" was an only slightly better alternative to "hell." A minister's daughter recently told me that when she was growing up, they used "Cheese and rice" instead of the name of her savior, which I imagine would also have been banned in the eighteenth century. Land mines lurk everywhere in the English language.
Jesus said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."
--MARK 12:17
Day 279. I've been dropping in on another evangelical Bible study class-- a straight one. They meet on Tuesday nights in the back room of the American Bible Society near Columbus Circle.
The dozen or so other members have been very welcoming of me, though a little perplexed at the same time, since I look more Jewish than your average diamond dealer on 47th Street. I'm glad they let me listen as we drill deep on a different passage from the Gospel of Mark each week. It's always humbling. I can keep up with them on the Old Testament--I can quote from Deuteronomy and Proverbs--but I'm still a third-string minor leaguer when it comes to the New Testament.
Anyway, I bring this up because last week at Bible study, the coleader--a tall, precise, white-haired man named Kevin--was talking about how he tries to be a good and law-abiding person.
He told us that he was recently driving from New York to Ohio for business, and he had a battle with himself. He'd keep gunning his car up to sixty-five, then he'd feel guilty for breaking the law and slow back down to fifty-five.
"I said to myself, 'Do I really need to speed?' " he said. " 'What's it going to save me? An hour? Is it worth it in the long run to break the law?' "
There is scriptural justification for strict observance of civil law, speed limits, and otherwise. You can see it in one of Peter's letters to his followers in the New Testament, where he tells them to obey the emperor: "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him" (1 Peter 2:13-14).
When I ask the pastor out to pasture Elton Richards about whether to obey every human institution, he cautions me: You can find the opposing idea in the New Testament as well. There's a story about Peter
and the apostles preaching God's word, and they are told by the authorities to shut up. They do not. They say, in effect, "We answer to a higher authority."
Marcus Borg, author of Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, says the two themes run throughout the Bible. Call them the status-quo motif and liberation motif. Status-quo sections tell us to support our earthly leaders. God appointed our leaders, so we shouldn't question them--or even speak ill of them ("You shall not . . . curse a ruler of your people," Exodus 22:28). The liberation parts encourage God's people to throw off the yoke of oppression and flee the Pharaoh or his modern-day equivalents. They say that God is with the people, not the rulers.
So which to choose? Well, in the case of traffic laws, Bible study leader Kevin has got a point. I'm not doing any noble Gandhi-like civil disobedience by going seventy in a school zone. I'm just trying to get home faster to take a nap. This month I have pledged to try to really follow New York's street laws. To the letter. This has changed my life in a more dramatic way than I could have imagined. Just try not to jaywalk in Manhattan. It's almost impossible. I wait on the corner, usually alone, or, if I'm lucky, with a German tourist couple and a class of first-graders on a field trip to the aquarium. The rest of New York pedestrians see the traffic lights as helpful suggestions and nothing more.
I won't pretend it's fun. It's a pain in the butt. It takes me about 30 percent longer to walk anywhere. And it's another source of stupid--but increasingly frequent--arguments with my wife. Yesterday we got out of a cab in the middle of the block, and I refused to cross the street there. I walked to the end of the block, waited for the light to change, marched over the zebra crossing, then walked back up the other side. Conveniently, it was raining. Julie was waiting for me under an awning.
"Hope you had a nice walk," she said, her voice more tired than angry.
Driving is just as bad. Until I started to pay attention, I didn't even know speed limits existed in New York. I figured the rule was: Gun your car to get to the next light as fast as possible, then jerk to a stop. Then repeat. Or, more likely, sit in traffic and go 5 mph. But if you look hard enough, you can find them. Actual speed limit signs--30 mph on most avenues. So whenever we rent a car to visit Julie's brother in New Jersey, I've made sure to cruise at a nice, smooth 25 mph down Columbus Avenue.
When we get to the highway, things get more complicated. Often, I'm the only one putt-putting along at fifty-five, certainly the only one without a "World's Best Grandpa" bumper sticker. I should probably have my hazards on. Cars whiz by me. They honk. They swerve. The drivers look at me like I'm the lone Red Sox fan at a Yankees game. The first time I drove on the highway, I couldn't stop laughing--I'm not sure out of nervousness or out of the absurdity of it or both.
So, in general, the whole experience has been a pain. But there are two upsides.
1. I've come to see obeying traffic laws as an urban version of the Sabbath. It's an enforced pause. When I stand alone on the corner, I try to spend the time appreciating the little things New York has to offer. Look at that: The street signs have changed from yellow and black to a much more pleasant green and white. When did that happen? Or else I watch the FedEx truck drive by and notice the secret white arrow embedded in its logo (it's between the F and the E).
2. I have freedom from worry. No one I know has ever been arrested for jaywalking. But whenever I violated the Don't Walk sign, there was always a tiny, faint pang from knowing that I was doing something wrong. I no longer have that. I feel in control. It's that same feeling of cleanliness, of relief, that I get when I actually fold all the sweaters in my closet or clean out all the emails in my in-box.
. . . Not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God.
--1 THESSALONIANS 4:5
Day 286. Julie is seven months pregnant with the twins, and wildly uncomfortable. She can hardly move. She gets out of breath opening the refrigerator door. When I asked her a couple of weeks ago if she wanted to be intimate, she said the following: "I can't think of anything I'd rather do less."
No sugarcoating there.
Speaking of sex, I think I dismissed the whole lust issue too glibly. I
found a way to rationalize it. I told myself, well, the Hebrew Bible has prosex parts, so I don't have to bother with all that modesty business.
I took the easy way out. The truth is, there are plenty of sections of the Bible that do encourage restraint of the sex drive, sometimes even abstinence. Jesus says not to even think about other women aside from your wife: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-8).
And the Apostle Paul implies that celibacy is the ideal; marriage is a second-best solution, a concession to our urges. As he says in Galatians 5:24: "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." So I decide that I should try to be ascetic for my final few weeks, and, as Paul says, put to death my earthly nature.
My previous strategy of censorship didn't work. We saw that with the CleanFlicks fiasco. It was too passive. I have to attack lust head-on. I have to change my way of thinking about sex. So after much reading, I've developed four strategies.
Last night I had the chance to road test all four. I went to a fashion show that Yossi had invited me to. He said the designer is an Orthodox Jew who grew up in Brooklyn, and I figured, Orthodox fashion? Sounds pretty tame. Lots of bulky, shapeless, earth-toned dresses. Perhaps a scandalous glimpse of exposed ankle. I could handle that.
I know I am going to be tempted from the moment I arrive. The event is held in Chelsea at the Frying Pan, a rusty boat docked off 23rd Street. The crowd is thick, packing both sides of the catwalk. Yes, there is a sprinkling of Orthodox Jews, but mostly it is gorgeous twentysomething fashion types with back tattoos and bare shoulders/midriffs/thighs. (There is also a man in a pink suit, pink shoes, and pink bowler hat, and on said bowler hat, a tiny billboard--about the size of a license plate-- with a functioning electronic text scrawl. This did not make me lustful, but I thought you should know.)
I start out with strategy number one. Here you think of the woman in question as out of your league. You remember this advice from the medieval rabbi way back in the first month? You have to think of yourself as a peasant and her as a princess. She's so beyond your grasp, you can admire her aesthetically but not lustfully.
I try this out within the first five minutes. When Yossi and I take our place, we notice a woman with a small leopard-skin skirt, small bustier, and very large cleavage.
"You don't see that too much in Crown Heights," says Yossi.
Interestingly, this strategy has gotten much easier for me with my current appearance. A year ago I might have deluded myself that I had a shot at Leopard-skin Bustier Woman. Nowadays, not so much.
Strategy two: Think of the woman as if she were your mother. This is another tip from the medieval rabbi. So I do it. I think of Leopard-skin Bustier Woman as my mom, and I feel revulsed. I feel like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange undergoing the Ludovico technique. This is more effective than strategy number one, and also more disturbing.
Strategy three: Recite Bible passages to yourself.
After a few minutes, the fashion show itself starts, and the temptations get worse. The models aren't hidden behind modest muumuus. They stomp down the runway with their exaggerated hip swivel, wearing alarmingly skimpy outfits that look like kimonos during a fabric shortage. One dark-haired model has no shirt or blouse whatsoever. The only thing around her chest is what appears to be an extralarge rubber band.
Here I try strategy number three. This one I picked up from a book called When Good Men Are Tempted, a guide to controlling your lust, by an evangelical Christian named Bill Perkins. He suggests you recite Bible passages: "I've found that memorizing large sections of the Bible gives me a safe mental focus when I'm tempted. By the time I recite a paragraph
or two to myself, my spirit is strengthened, and my mind is cleared."
So I do that. I mouth to myself one of the verses he suggested. It worked, in a way. My brain was so busy with its recital project, it didn't have time to focus on the rubber band. The meaning of the passage is almost beside the point. I could have probably recited the lyrics to The Mikado and gotten a similar benefit. It's all about keeping your mind distracted.
The show ends, and I tell Yossi I should probably go. He says, "You sure you don't want to just hang around for a few minutes?"
"Well, just a few minutes."
We bump into a friend of Yossi's. She is blond, Israeli, cute, and very drunk.
"She has a weird fetish," Yossi whispers to me. "She likes to fondle payot."
As in the side locks? Yossi nods.
Oh, man. Yossi introduces me to her.
"I'm very drunk," she says.
I smile noncommittally.
Was she checking out my side locks? I think so.
