Throughout my whole life I have always thought that if you "vouch" for someone, then you are telling people that you trust that person. You also agree to take responsibility for that persons actions.
Now to my question. If you "vouch" for someone that they are trustworthy and they take a loan, is the person who vouched putting their reputation on the line? If you didn't trust a person to repay, why would you "vouch" for them?
Curious to see what others say about this.
You make a fair point. Vouching for someone means putting your own reputation on the line to speak to their character or credibility. However, it does not equal blanket endorsement of everything they might ever do. The scope matters. For instance, I could vouch that someone is honest in a particular situation without claiming they will never tell a lie. Its circumstantial and Im sticking my neck out based on what I know of them in that moment or context.
Even honest people sometimes fail their own standards. So vouching is not a lifelong guarantee as much as staking my belief in who they are, right then and there.