Marriage matters…because God created it, not society, and therefore God as God alone defines it. It matters because it’s a picture of God’s gospel love, hard-wired into creation. Change or redefine marriage, and you’ve gone a long way toward defacing and obscuring one of the most significant common-grace pointers to the love of God in Christ.
Michael Lawrence

A Vow

A Young Man’s Vow

Recognizing that growing up Is to a large extent a matter of becoming more responsible for both myself and for others, I pledge to strive for maturity by exercising restraint and by foregoing those activities which would be hurtful to the young women in my life. My responsible and loving concern for them will be evidenced by the following:

  • I will never ask a girl to compromise her moral responsibility for my pleasure, even though we may have strong feelings for each other.
  • I will never jeopardize any young woman’s mental or physical health, her self-respect, her reputation,or her educational or other future plans by engaging in sexual activity with her outside of marriage.
  • I will never risk fathering my children in situations wherein their mother and I are not married and prepared to give them the long-term loft care to which every child to entitled
  • I will never attempt to use another human being to prove anything about myself.
  • I will never ask another person to prove her feelings for me by any actions which either of us suspect to be improper.
  • I will not engage in conversation in which women are spoken of In a degrading fashion,
  • I will promote healthy relationships between women and myself, and prevent destructive attitudes, however subtle, from taking hold in me by avoiding materials in which women are degraded or in any way depicted as less than human beings deserving of love and respect.
  • I will never attempt to influence the behavior of others for the pleasure of exercising power over them, especially in matters of sexual activity.

I am fully aware in making this pledge that keeping it will not always be easy and that signing it may expose me to ridicule of my peers. However, I regard these things as a small price to pay for the benefits that keeping it will bring in the lives of those who interact with me, and ultimately in the world. I will become a responsible, mature, and truly loving person by keeping this pledge. I will become capable of establishing and maintaining healthy and mutually fulfilling relationships. I will contribute to the betterment of my world by not adding to its problems and by reserving my energies for positive activities rather than the undoing of avoidable mistakes.

Aware of those benefits which I desire for the lives of those I care about I now confidently and proudly sign this pledge In the presence of the undersigned witnesses this day.

Witnesses: