Year of Living Biblically ch.10

1. When Jacobs decides to follow the traffic laws, he has a hard time doing it at first because he never even knew traffic laws existed in New York City, but he finds two upsides to his experience. The first upside is that obeying traffic laws forces him to pause, and by doing this he begins to notice a lot more of his surroundings. The second upside is he doesn't have to worry about breaking rules because before, he use to jaywalk often to save time. In my opinion, I think these consequences from obeying the traffic laws are partially coincidence, but they do make him stop for a moment and think of his surroundings, which has to do with the earlier chapters about him appreciating what God has created in the world.
2. One of the ways Jacobs recognizes the problems with absolute literalism in this chapter is when he goes to Tennessee and Jimmy is snake handling, which is an action taken literally from a the passage of Mark 16:18. One of the problems with this is that it is really dangerous and people die from playing with snakes. There are also other instances where Jacobs points out from the Bible that Jesus tells Peter to forgive his brother seventy times seven when he means an infinant number of times. Jacobs has some fun with this and decides to take it literally even though it is supposed to be taken metaphorically. There is also a part saying you should chop off certain body parts if they cause you to sin, such as taking out your eye if your eye causes you to sin. People actually try to take this literally even though they aren't necessarily supposed to.
3. Reconstructionism or the dominionism movement(dominionism is slightly less extreme) are thousands of radical fundamentalists who want a biblical government, which enforces the laws set out in both testaments, including executions of homosexuals, aldulters etc. As Jacobs describes them, "they are the American Taliban." They are very extreme and somewhat racist, depending on the person. It relates to Christianity by them taking everything said in the bible seriously.
4. The most important thing Jacobs learns from the snake handlers in my opinion is how the serpent handling isn't as bizarre as he expected it to be. Jacobs quotes from something he once read, "Religion makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange." In this case, serpent handling becomes more familiar to him for some reason. Also, Jacobs learns from the passion of the preachers in the Tennessee church and felt very hypnotized by their sermons and had to snap himself out of it and not surrender yet. The passion of the preachers showed Jacobs how much faith people really have in God.