The vow
No one has ever asked a bride to prove the groom exists before she says I do. She is not there to certify a fact. She is there to pledge a self. That is the whole of what is asked here, and it is asked once, freely, and never checked.
I do. Not I believe that. I believe in. In Jesus, whom I cannot see and could never prove, who was on the road ahead of me before I looked up, and who asked me to follow. I give Him my heart, my feet, and my one life. I'll try my best to listen for Him and listen to Him. When He asks anything of me, the answer on my lips will be as You wish, from love, never from fear.
Brother Lawrence, asked what it took, said there needed neither art nor science for going to God, but only a heart resolutely determined. That is the same sentence.
Nobody here will ever ask you to say that you believe:
- that God exists;
- that the earth is any particular age;
- anything about anyone’s virginity at any time;
- that anyone is in hell, or that hell is a place;
- that any book is without error, or that the life is in the book;
- that your friend of another faith is lost;
- that you are a Christian;
- that the person who wrote these essays is right about any of it.
Every one of those is an opinion, and you may hold any of them at any strength from certainty to none, and change your mind on Tuesday, and still be walking.