Today is a very special day for me and Brian, today we celebrate four years of being together. If you know us, you may be thinking: idiots, they got married in December of 2007! Can’t they count? But this anniversary (not of when we got married but of when we first committed to each other) is far sweeter in our eyes. By the time we got married, our commitment wasn’t awkward, naive or unsure anymore. It was confident and certain, which has its own merits. But the commitment we made four years ago today, wasn’t as easy. Certainty makes things easy, and commitment to marriage has much more certainty surrounding it. The two stupid and awkward people who committed to each other four years ago had no certainty, only decision (faith, that is…).
Peter Rollins said in How (Not) to Speak of God, “Doubt provides the context out of which real decision occurs and real love is tested, for love will say ‘yes’ regardless of uncertainty. A love that requires contracts and absolutes in order to act is no love at all.”
Now, I don’t believe that this devalues our marriage vows in the least, but, instead, I believe it seeks to place at the starting point of our union, not the commitment that was born of confidence, but the one born of faith. This may also turn out to be true of the more difficult renewal of commitment that will take place later in our marriage (when confidence in December of 2007 is even harder to sustain). It will require faith, which, as Rollins says, makes real love possible.
It’s the same way I feel about falling in love with Jesus, or my “conversion” experience. When was it? Was it when I got my pass into heaven at age 7, when I prayed “the prayer”? Or was it a few years prior when I took my first sweet steps of faith towards him? Or was it at age 13 when I actually started digging into the scriptures for myself? Was at age 16 when I had a major crisis of faith and God reached down from the heavens to rescue me from my adolescence? Or could it have been five years ago when I was so confused and depressed that I wanted to die, and God saved me from that, and I felt as if I was starting all over again, even perhaps understanding grace for the first time? It seems weird, looking back on all these starting points, to give preeminence to “the prayer,” just because it gave me the certainty of heaven. Before I knew of my reward, my little feet were taking faith steps toward God. Something was already beginning before I said “the prayer,” something born of faith, not certainty about a reward. And after I knew of my reward, and had the certainty of heaven, my love for God was tested time and again, but the certainty of heaven couldn’t save it, only childlike steps of faith.
So, in both the union between me and Brian and between me and God, the real glue, the crux, the starting point, isn’t certainty, but faith.
