Purity is not in vogue these days, but let me tell you what a father told his daughter one day. She wrote him while away at college: “Dear Dad, My classmates make promiscuity sound so natural and so inevitable. There are times when I wonder what I am waiting for.” Her father wrote her back: “You are waiting to be free from the nagging voice of conscience and from the gray shadow of guilt, free to give all of yourself, not a panicky fraction. Some deep instinct in you knows what tremendous influence your first complete union with another person will be. And that same instinct keeps telling you not to waste it.”

Oh, how I wish more families were open enough to discuss this issue and to encourage young people to remain pure.

The apostle Paul wrote to his young friend Timothy, “Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2:22)