I wrote this on 25th January 2010. I had just gone through a relatively disharmonious divorce in 2009 and felt the repercussions from my "church community". Amidst this turmoil, I had begun working with homeless "street kids", in fact, for a short time, late in 2009, I actually "lived" with them on the streets of Rustenburg, sleeping under an overpass on the N4 highway. Wild times!

I have been thinking about "love" a lot lately. You know what the ultimate “love test” is? Your reaction when the 15-year-old teenager tells you she’s pregnant!

What do you do? In fact, I reckon most of us have been in this exact same situation before – we’ve heard of someone, or someone we know has a kid that gets knocked up:

"We’ve been at a church when the gossip reaches us about THAT girl, who we all had our reservations about and now she’s actually gone and disgraced her parents by falling pregnant. And what’s worse, you know, is that the church suffers because of this. Don’t you just wish people would consider the consequences of their irresponsibility before they bring this upon the church of Jesus Christ, as if His church doesn’t have enough problems to deal with as it is?"

Have you been there? What did YOU think? What was your instinctive first reaction in the pit of your stomach when you heard the kid was pregnant? Or the wife had an affair? Or the husband was fired from a stable job? Or a private business goes bankrupt? Or a couple gets divorced? Come on, be honest?

(As I edit this now, I find it strangely disturbing how the patriarchal environment of the contemporary church affected me to write "the wife had an affair" and the "husband lost his job". In retrospect, however, it is true that women's fidelity and men's employment were always more important in that environment.)

I’ve been through some drama in recent months and also, amid personal turmoil, started working with street kids. So I’ve had my fair share of judgemental comments and looks thrown loosely in my direction and I’ve had the occasion to entertain some pretty judgemental thoughts all of my own.

What came as a real shock to me was to read in the second chapter of James that “have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”

That is to say, these thoughts of ours, so commonly entertained in these situations, are EVIL!

So, I concluded the “Principle of the Pregnant 15-year-old”. If I can learn to embrace her and first say “don’t worry my child, you are loved and nothing can change that and together with Grace we can sort all this out”, then I am being loving. Anything less is EVIL.

According to the stories in the Gospels, Mary was in this position. How must those have felt of their “evil thoughts” when the revelation finally struck them of exactly what fools they had been? Did the reality of the situation ever dawn upon them? Do those with that mindset ever have a clear revelation? Was it easy for Mary to keep going and walk around town? Even with Joseph apparently doing the “right thing”?

Nothing is as it seems and unless we have some divine insight into every situation, best we just love.

So here I am, I’m 15 and I’m pregnant. What you gonna do about it?

13 October 2021