Rachel Evans: Woman Lives Biblically For One Year, Writes Book on Experience
After a year of living the full Biblical life, Rachel Held Evans wrote a book about her experience.
Evans, a Christian writer, spent a year living under the literal translation of how the Bible's Old Testament and New Testament say to live life.
One of the guidelines the 31-year-old had to follow was to grow out her hair as per 1 Corinthians 11:15. This turned out to be harder than she thought as Evans was used to her short hair.
"I know it's trite and vain, but it was the hair thing," Evans told the Times Free Press. "I know it's supposed to be a woman's glory to have long hair, but my hair was not made to be long."
Evans comes from an Evangelical Christian family and after she was married she wanted to see how exactly the strict rules of the Bible would apply to her as a modern woman.
"I wanted to sort of challenge that the Bible prescribes one right way to be a woman of faith," Evans said .
Author A.J.Jacobs had done a similar life challenge and wrote about it, giving Evans the inspiration to try it out for herself.
Evans spent the year focusing on one virtue a month such as calling her husband "master" as per 1 Peter 3:5, which only lasted a week.
"We were both very weirded out by that one," said Evans. "There was no way I was going to do that for a month, much less a year."
She also had a hard time dealing with sleeping in the backyard when she was on her monthly periods, as per Leviticus 15:19-33.
The experience was difficult, but in the end Evans learned that a woman can't live life from the Bible's literal translation.
"We wish the Bible was a blueprint [for everything]," said Evans, "but it's not a blueprint."
Rachel Held Evans' book titled "A Year of Biblical Womanhood" hits booksellers October 30.
