I wanted to followup on my earlier entry about this book and let you know my general conclusions.

I was not disappointed with Jacobs’ writing style and wit. I continued to chuckle and at times, roar with laughter as he descriptively led me into his wild-bearded world. As a Christian, I had never considered many of the lesser-known commands of scripture, and his often obsessive-compulsive attempts at obeying them always caused my smile to mingle with furrowed-brow reflection.

I was, however, a little disappointed with the conclusion. You see, throughout the book, Jacobs continues to discover more about God, and unsurprisingly he likes what/who he begins to connect with. For me, suspense was building… what would he think about the God revealed in the New Testament portion of his year? Would he as an agnostic Jew come to believe in the person of Jesus Christ as Israel’s Messiah? Would he get “saved?”

I won’t spoil your own reading of the book, but I was disappointed with its conclusion – partly because it concluded. I no longer get an inside track on Jacobs’ journey. I no longer get to peer through his eyes at faith and Christianity in a raw, sincere and genuine way.

I hope that Jacobs’ spiritual journey has continued since the book’s publication. At several points in the book, he confesses his OC nature to check blog reviews and Amazon.com rankings of his two books. Perhaps he’ll stumble upon this one and share with us where he is today on God, Christ, and life.

The idea is brilliant. We live (or at least think we do) in a secular world where religion has no imapct on our daily lives. Yet with the media buzz on terrorism I think more people are looking closely at religions that don’t fit mainstream norms. Jacobs’ experiment had so much potential to delve into America’s (dis)enchantment with religion but he never quite got there. By the end of first third of the book he begins recycling the same ideas/questions. By the time you reach the middle it just drags as he has already made all the points he’s going to make and makes them over and over. Even the really good questions never really get anything more profound than a truism. He scratches the surface but that’s all.

I thought the idea was great, but the book was sort of boring. Also seeing into the lives of some of the people he met depressed me— since this gave me another glimpse at how many crazy religious fundamentalists there are in the world.