okieinexile
Well-Known Member
The Young Girl in trouble
By Bobby Neal Winters
The Bible is full of images that affect us on an emotional level. One of the pictures we first see is that of the woman who is desperate to become pregnant. First it was Sarah the mother of Isaac, then it was Rachel the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, and then it was Hannah the mother of Samuel. There might even be more of these, but these are the ones I am aware of.
Reading the stories of these women, we can get a sense the desperation they faced. They lived in a time when from a very practical point of view, a woman's children, in particular the male children, were her life. When I say that, I don't mean it to sound sentimental. In those days, there were no nursing homes, so if you were going to be taken care of in your old age, your children would have to do it. From our time, we might think it small and greedy to have children for these reasons, but we do this from the point of view of a people standing on other's shoulders.
In spite of the practical aspect of having children in Biblical times, and bearing in mind that things are very similar today in most of the world, we should mark the women who lost their lives giving birth. On the list women from Genesis, Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin. This was a risk the women of that time knew they were running, and yet they took it. Most of us don't have to look very far to see women who have suffered and run risks willingly in order to bear children.
In recounting this, we should notice it is the women who are running all the risks. Women bear the children, and the men may or may not even still be around when the child is born. This is not fair, but it is the way it is. If the Bible were written today, we might have another image along side of the woman desperate to have a child, one of the young girl in trouble desperate not to. While it takes two people to start a baby, it takes two to raise it, in between the first step and the second the man has the option of running off. A girl with a baby in her womb who doesn't have the father around to help is a girl is trouble, no two ways about it.
Without thinking too hard, I can come up with half-a-dozen cases of young girls in trouble in my hometown just during my adolescence. My father was very good about pointing these out to my brother and me. At that time, in that place, the girl in trouble was taken care of by what was called a shotgun wedding, and most of those marriages are still going strong, and at least two of these couples now have grandchildren.
Girls in trouble today have more choices. There is the option of abortion, for instance. With just a visit to a clinic, it can be "fixed," no more worries, no more baby, and no more girl in trouble.
We would be emotionally retarded not to feel sympathy for these young women. It doesn't take much of an imagination to conjure up a picture of a girl crying, trembling, and alone. Nature has programmed us to respond to this image.
We can see the girl in trouble, but we can't see the baby, so we can tell ourselves the baby doesn't exist, isn't really human, or isn't a "person." We can say that it is just tissue, a clump of cells, or refer to it by a variety of scientific names, but this is all emotionally driven. It is a way to soften the crime the girl in trouble has the choice to commit against her child and against herself.
Thank God we can empathize, or it would be a hard world indeed, but we can't stop there. There are two roads that go through the darkness, one leads to life and the other to death. The first step down the correct road is knowledge of the truth. The thing growing within the girl in trouble is a baby. While it might be hard to tell at first, if you leave it alone and let it live, it comes out looking like us. There is no magic that happens between fertilization and birth; there is only growth.
This week I've seen two things that have been bearing on my heart. The first was an article in Christianity Today that discussed "personhood." This is a concept that I do not like. I know what a human is, but I live in fear that I might not be a person, and it seems that some folks think it's ok to kill humans that aren't persons.
My wife was thirty-eight while she was pregnant with our third child, and it is a fairly common practice to do amniocentesis during such pregnancies as women who become pregnant this late in life have a greater chance of giving birth to children with Down's syndrome. If the child has Down's, the pregnancy can then be terminated, because for some a child with Down's doesn't meet their notion of personhood.
The doctor let us listen to the baby's heartbeat, and then asked us if we wanted to schedule an amnio.
My wife, knowing full-well the implications of this as it had all been explained, asked, "Why?"
The doctor smiled and said, "Very few parents do the test after they hear the heartbeat." When we hear the heartbeat, we know there is a tiny human in there.
The other thing had happened this week was seeing a short bit of a movie that was on the news. There was neither plot nor dialog; the photography, though clear enough to see what needed to be seen, wasn't up to Hollywood standard. But it was a great movie anyway. It was a 3-d movie of a baby in the womb. We could see a 12-week old fetus smile, yawn, and take steps. We knew it was a little human in there all along, but now we have another image to focus on, the child in the womb.
We live in a country where there is a legal right to choose abortion and where there is separation between church and state. However, we in the church can still teach our own and any else who would listen.
By Bobby Neal Winters
The Bible is full of images that affect us on an emotional level. One of the pictures we first see is that of the woman who is desperate to become pregnant. First it was Sarah the mother of Isaac, then it was Rachel the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, and then it was Hannah the mother of Samuel. There might even be more of these, but these are the ones I am aware of.
Reading the stories of these women, we can get a sense the desperation they faced. They lived in a time when from a very practical point of view, a woman's children, in particular the male children, were her life. When I say that, I don't mean it to sound sentimental. In those days, there were no nursing homes, so if you were going to be taken care of in your old age, your children would have to do it. From our time, we might think it small and greedy to have children for these reasons, but we do this from the point of view of a people standing on other's shoulders.
In spite of the practical aspect of having children in Biblical times, and bearing in mind that things are very similar today in most of the world, we should mark the women who lost their lives giving birth. On the list women from Genesis, Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin. This was a risk the women of that time knew they were running, and yet they took it. Most of us don't have to look very far to see women who have suffered and run risks willingly in order to bear children.
In recounting this, we should notice it is the women who are running all the risks. Women bear the children, and the men may or may not even still be around when the child is born. This is not fair, but it is the way it is. If the Bible were written today, we might have another image along side of the woman desperate to have a child, one of the young girl in trouble desperate not to. While it takes two people to start a baby, it takes two to raise it, in between the first step and the second the man has the option of running off. A girl with a baby in her womb who doesn't have the father around to help is a girl is trouble, no two ways about it.
Without thinking too hard, I can come up with half-a-dozen cases of young girls in trouble in my hometown just during my adolescence. My father was very good about pointing these out to my brother and me. At that time, in that place, the girl in trouble was taken care of by what was called a shotgun wedding, and most of those marriages are still going strong, and at least two of these couples now have grandchildren.
Girls in trouble today have more choices. There is the option of abortion, for instance. With just a visit to a clinic, it can be "fixed," no more worries, no more baby, and no more girl in trouble.
We would be emotionally retarded not to feel sympathy for these young women. It doesn't take much of an imagination to conjure up a picture of a girl crying, trembling, and alone. Nature has programmed us to respond to this image.
We can see the girl in trouble, but we can't see the baby, so we can tell ourselves the baby doesn't exist, isn't really human, or isn't a "person." We can say that it is just tissue, a clump of cells, or refer to it by a variety of scientific names, but this is all emotionally driven. It is a way to soften the crime the girl in trouble has the choice to commit against her child and against herself.
Thank God we can empathize, or it would be a hard world indeed, but we can't stop there. There are two roads that go through the darkness, one leads to life and the other to death. The first step down the correct road is knowledge of the truth. The thing growing within the girl in trouble is a baby. While it might be hard to tell at first, if you leave it alone and let it live, it comes out looking like us. There is no magic that happens between fertilization and birth; there is only growth.
This week I've seen two things that have been bearing on my heart. The first was an article in Christianity Today that discussed "personhood." This is a concept that I do not like. I know what a human is, but I live in fear that I might not be a person, and it seems that some folks think it's ok to kill humans that aren't persons.
My wife was thirty-eight while she was pregnant with our third child, and it is a fairly common practice to do amniocentesis during such pregnancies as women who become pregnant this late in life have a greater chance of giving birth to children with Down's syndrome. If the child has Down's, the pregnancy can then be terminated, because for some a child with Down's doesn't meet their notion of personhood.
The doctor let us listen to the baby's heartbeat, and then asked us if we wanted to schedule an amnio.
My wife, knowing full-well the implications of this as it had all been explained, asked, "Why?"
The doctor smiled and said, "Very few parents do the test after they hear the heartbeat." When we hear the heartbeat, we know there is a tiny human in there.
The other thing had happened this week was seeing a short bit of a movie that was on the news. There was neither plot nor dialog; the photography, though clear enough to see what needed to be seen, wasn't up to Hollywood standard. But it was a great movie anyway. It was a 3-d movie of a baby in the womb. We could see a 12-week old fetus smile, yawn, and take steps. We knew it was a little human in there all along, but now we have another image to focus on, the child in the womb.
We live in a country where there is a legal right to choose abortion and where there is separation between church and state. However, we in the church can still teach our own and any else who would listen.
