I was just thinking about the different instructions about how to deal with vows that Rod brought up in his sermon. Apparently my brain likes to take various true things and put them next to each other and say "and now what do we think we mean?".
My brain must have gotten to "go quickly to your neighbor and ask to be released" (or something like that) and paired it up with "for example, a marriage vow is a vow before God". My subconscious then notified my conscious that we had a problem. Who is the "neighbor" that you would go to go to in this case?
Mathematically (meaning who promised what to whom), its the people in the marriage who may release each other from their vow. If the people don't release each other then God would have some role as enforcer of the vow. That is, if they are vowing to each other "with God as my witness".
But I've always just assumed that people could not release each other from that particular vow. Somehow, the vow is an agreement made directly with God rather than before God. Only God can really release you and he doesn't ever want to.
So now I'm left wondering. Wonder, wonder, wonder...questions spiral out like fractals riding off into the sunset.
Any Bible stories of God releasing people from vows when they ask?
Is there a difference between vowing to God and vowing before God?
If you "let your yes be yes and your no be no" in real life, would that change marriage ceremonies?
In court, when you swear "on the Bible" "so help you God" -that's swearing before God? So God as the enforcer? And the court, that's who you are swearing to? Theoretically, they could release you from your oath of telling the the truth. Is that why the court can let you be silent and not tell the "whole" truth sometimes? Because they have the power to release you?
Just curious....
Emily Mc. |