I was driving at home in Alabama over Christmas break with the radio tuned to a country station of course and on came Faith Hill’s “A Baby Changes Everything.”
Though I am generally ambivalent about country songs with such cliché titles especially in the case of made-for-Christmas tracks I decided to give it a chance. I quickly realized how much the song really had to offer.
“Teenage girl much too young…” it began. While I would be hard-pressed to recall the rest of the words I heard enough to make the connection that she was talking about Mary – as in Mary mother of Jesus.
I don’t know why it hadn’t struck me in such a way before then but in that moment I was overcome by the real weight of the fact that God chose to become flesh through an unwed pregnant teenage girl.
God could have chosen any other way He pleased to come into the world as a human. But it is of ultimate significance that He specifically chose Mary knowing she would in turn be scorned by the pious judgmental religious society in her situation; the very same morally elitist society Jesus was born to expose and defeat.
He intentionally chose someone who would identify with those marginalized branded individuals with whom He would one day surround himself.
Obviously we now know that Jesus’ conception was no slip-up between Mary and Joseph. But the fact that this is a “given” among believers today means that we rarely recognize that it would actually be years until anyone outside of a chosen few would believe Mary to be more than a typical promiscuous teenage girl. It is a label that carried with it the same shame then as it does in our society today if not more. As a result we miss the significance of this fact in the light of Jesus’ mission and purpose and the nature of God.
Imagine the humiliation and premature responsibility of being a pregnant teen. Though people make many life decisions with visibly negative effects I feel there is no shame judgment or scorn greater than that reserved for an unwed and pregnant teenage girl.
People know what could happen when they decide to have sex. Some may say these girls asked for this new responsibility. Regardless there is another side to the situation. Someone else had to be involved as well – only that someone does not have to wear the consequences of his actions for the entire world to see. Think about that thing you are not particularly proud of that no one will ever know about. Have you ever seen a young pregnant girl who is obviously unmarried and felt lucky – or guilty – that you were not experiencing the same consequence?
Maybe she did not ask for it. Maybe she was raped and decided not to abort the child. I realize this case is probably more uncommon than that of someone who simply failed to use protection or frequents many sexual partners. Nonetheless who are you to make such an assumption? Maybe she is stuck in an abusive relationship that involves a psychotic boyfriend who threatens her into having sex with him. Even if the former were true and the pregnancy was a result of wild promiscuity on this young woman’s part perhaps the fact is that her bulging belly and the unborn child inside of it serve as daily reminders of the destructive ways in which she has tried to find identity and self-worth or deal with a painful past. Furthermore that belly makes it impossible for her to hide those things from hundreds of judging eyes.