The Perfect Storm… Within

I saw this article in my RSS feeds today, and it caused me to wince a little when the gravity and reality of it hit me.

The Perfect Storm… Within.

by Lane Douglas

When it comes to a love/hate relationship with the cinema, no other movie comes nearer and further from my heart than M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Being left speechless at unforeseen endings in The Sixth Sense and Signs, I approached Village with high expectations. Instead, I left with high aggravations. The movie was predictable, and I had the plot guessed within 20 minutes. I hated it. (Which is why I will wait for The Happening until DVD.)

Yet, I loved it. Simply because no movie in a long time has done such a great job showing that what plagues us as a human race is due to an internal, and not an external problem. It is because of our spiritual ailment that we hurt ourselves, and others and not because of things surrounding us. So while I do not recommend the movie to friends seeking a thrill, I do sometimes recommend it to new Christians trying to comprehend the “sin” issue.

This same concept was played out this past year in Gloucester, MA. In a recent TIME article headlined on CNN.com today, it seems that a group of high school girls, none older than 16, made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. They succeeded.

What seemed alarming to the school principal, clinic director and townspeople who heard the news was how some of them went about it. Some of the girls actually used a resident homeless guy to impregnate them. Apparently, this was not about girls wanting to “grow up” or about reckless teen love. This was simply young kids wanting to have young kids of their own.

As the town searched for answers, the usual “external factors” were identified. Many felt that Hollywood had glamorized teen pregnancy and thus the West Coast was to blame. Others attributed it to the town’s harsh, blue-collar environment. As a coastal town built on the fishing industry, it has seen its share of divorce and widowed mothers. This is the same town highlighted in the movie, The Perfect Storm, about the true account of the fishing boat, The Andrea Gail, being lost in the 1991 Halloween storm. Surely one of these issues is to blame.

What surprised me, though, was the fact that the TIME article actually had the answer to the problem right within the content of its paragraphs. The journalist interviewed Amanda Ireland, an 18 year old mother who had gotten pregnant her freshman year, to get a perspective on why these girls were doing this. Ireland’s answer was that the girls, unable to find it anywhere else, are now “so excited to have someone love them unconditionally.” In other words, these girls got pregnant because of a deep-seated desire to have someone love them. If they could not find that person, they would create them.

But despite the answer staring them in the face, the town seems blind to it. Their solution is to go back and begin, again, handing out contraceptives. While these girls are looking for love and acceptance, the town’s answer is to give them a condom. As if somehow, having a condom would have stopped them from fulfilling their pact.

This is what I mean by pointing to Shyamalan’s Village as the model. The town’s answer is to attempt the solution of a barrier device to something that has already gotten in. The only real answer for this town’s dilemma is the answer that the local church holds. Only Jesus is going to answer the cry of loneliness disguised as a pregnancy pact. And, having lived in that area for almost 5 years, I know the town well. It is not without its missionaries as both Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (my hailing grounds) sit not 15 miles from there. What’s more, the town has a plethora of churches to include an AG one. So perhaps, as a short end to this post, you might consider a prayer for Gloucester. For unless these mothers find Christ, this vicious cycle will be repeated in 15 years when these newborns go looking for love themselves.

Article copied from AGThinktank

Such a true observation. The church wants to put a band-aid on the issue, or worse, run away from it and protect ourselves from it. But what about these girls? Their lives are forever changed because of the choice they made. Does God still love them unconditionally? Of course! But they don’t know that. Because we shun them, wanting to protect our own. God forgive us for not showing the love that you freely gave us!