We are nothing if not rash—nothing if not prone to making vows that are impulsive, promises we cannot keep. Sometimes we deliver on them only partially and at other times we fail altogether. “It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay,” says the Sage. But too often we do exactly that—we fail utterly to pay what we owe, to come through as we have promised. This is true of our greatest vows and our smallest, our most significant and least consequential.
Jesus once told a tiny parable about being rash and about properly counting the cost before making a commitment. “Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” He followed it with another: “What king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?”
He was calling upon his followers—and potential followers—to consider the cost of discipleship, to understand that to follow him would exact a toll in suffering, pain,
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