In her memoir Still, Lauren Winner recounts the story of her friend Julian. When Julian was just twelve years old and preparing to be confirmed, she told her father—the pastor of the church—she wasn’t sure she could go through with it. She wasn’t sure she believed everything she was supposed to believe, at least not enough to make a promise before God and her congregation to believe those things forever. He father told her, “What you promise when you are confirmed is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that this is the story you will wrestle with
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