17 Massachusetts high school girls, all under the age of 16, made a "pregnancy pact," some of them reacting to news they were pregnant with high fives .A lot of people are shaking their heads this week, wondering what on earth these kids were thinking. There’ll also likely be a lot of fingers wagged in their direction, and, I’d guess some of their parents will move away in shame (ruining the point of this childish “pact,” which was, apparently, for these girls to raise their babies all at the same time).
I find this devastating and sad. First and foremost by the contempt these girls—children themselves—show for God. It always saddens me to meet people who do not know God, who are not even *curious* about God. Children, I can sort of understand, Most kids are, frankly, idiots. They’re supposed to be. Their emotion completely overrules their intellect (which is why we don’t let them drive or, say, have sex). They are insufferably self-absorbed, typically thinking only and exclusively of themselves. They are grossly impatient, taking ridiculous risks because they’re too much of a child to simply wait.
What’s even sadder is, this description can aptly be made of many, many, many adults I know. Every day I am simply aghast and appalled to realize how most many of us are idiots, how horribly and devastatingly immature we are.
I do not know these girls’ parents or their pastors or rabbis or what have you. But the evidence of something being disastrously broken—in the home, in the church, in the school—is now available for the nation to see. So, even as we roll our eyes and scoff at the shameful, unimaginably gross selfishness of this act, it behooves us to look first in a mirror, wondering about our own selfishness.
Selfishness spreads like cancer. From my chair, these seventeen girls (and, there were actually more of them, some did not get pregnant) are being raised by idiots. Who were, themselves, likely raised by idiots. And the girls, themselves, will, sadly, raise their babies like idiots. And, having lost their youth, their future, their figure and thus their idiot boyfriends, weighted down by the 24-7 responsibility of child-rearing, these girls are about to quickly discover just how big an idiot they are.
It amazes me how stupid we all can be. How an insipid, insane, ridiculous idea just spreads like wildfire through dumb, ignorant, lazy people; people with no investment in themselves, in their community, in the world beyond staring at their navel all day. People are hungry for leadership. At the end of the day, even the most outrageous nut can get someone to follow him if he shouts loud enough. Not because he's so anointed or even that his ideas are so good, but because most of us are inert and lazy. Truth requires investment, first and foremost in yourself.
Of all the brain-dead ideas America’s youth have come up with, this one absolutely takes the cake in its brazen selfishness. Proof positive of a society in decline, whose aspirations don’t extend beyond staring out the window at the lawn. All of it, from my chair, a result of our turning away from God. Seventeen girls desperate to fill their lives with meaning, and God apparently not even a contender for that challenge.
