According to a Harvard study, public pledges to remain a virgin until marriage are largely a waste of time as teenagers either lie about their sexual pasts when they sign the contracts or conveniently forget ever making the promise after succumbing to temptation.
While virginity is important in this day of terrifying pestilences and conniving women seeking to file paternity suits, why do these promises have to be made into public affairs becoming an entire congregation's or youth group's business?
And therein no doubt lies much of the problem as in our Oprahized culture it seems the only sin that remains is keeping some portion of one's life hidden from the scrutiny of the group.
Many teenagers no doubt simply sign the pledges out of fear of shaming if they do not and it wouldn't surprise me if some Christian schools did not threaten to expel students refusing to take the vow as some of these institutions possess detailed behavioral codes of what students may or may not do on their own time outside of school and many of the demands are not even clearly delineated in the pages of the Bible.
For example, the school I attended forbade students from having TV's in their rooms at home. The last time I checked, the parents were paying the rent or making the house payment, not the school.
Sexual purity is very important in the eyes of the Lord; however, that does not mean the pastor gets to watch while you are doing it. Likewise, the kinds of information detailed in these abstinence pledges belongs within the context of individual families and private relationships; not as fodder for church gossips.
by Frederick Meekins
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