On Making Promises

Question has been posed to me recently, “What do you think of making promises?”

The Bible shows when people make promises they inevitably fail to keep them. Moses came off Mt Sinai, gave the people the Commandments, and they’re optimistic response was, “this we will do.” What a lie! They didn’t do it. Does history teach us to trust in the promises of man? If anything, history teaches us to trust in the breaking of promises. To trust in the keeping of promises can be catastrophic. Stalin in WWII trusted Hitler when he promised not to attack Russia.   Stalin wanted to believe him and so he did. In fact, he believed him so much that when his own informants told him Hitler was preparing to attack he had his informants killed for spreading lies. His trust in Hitler resulted in the greatest battle in history, the Battle of Moscow, in which 2.5 million lives were lost. Stalin didn’t believed Hitler’s promise and so didn’t feel the need to prepare for war. Read the book, The Greatest Battle.

The most common promise is marriage. We usually say it is a vow. In too many instances it is a rash vow. Perhaps all vows are rash vows. Martin Lloyd Jones married his wife not because she loved him but because she gave him a promise. I’m sure he didn’t think it rash of her. Two questions: 1) Should we have vows?; 2) What should vows be? Ought a man break a promise? Ought a man make a promise? The worst thing is when people make promises in the midst of breaking promises. “Sorry I can’t go go with you tonight. I’ll go next week. I promise.”