So, Let’s Just Stone Her!

Have we, as a human race, lost all possibility of human empathy? Are we now a culture of people who would rather throw Mamma from the train than extend a little compassion to those who are hurting or in need? While reading through news stories and blogs today, I came across this interesting factoid. The actress who will be portraying the Virgin Mary in the upcoming movie The Nativity Story is pregnant. She is sixteen.

Frankly, I am just horrified at the general lack of caring that has been portrayed via words on the computer screen all over the internet in the past few days.

Let’s take this blog, for example, which attempts to compare Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Oscar speech while enormously pregnant to Keisha’s pregnancy:

I can’t picture Castle-Hughes having such grace, instead, seeing the talented 16 year old with child seems like it would only be a little sad.

Frankly, I’m having trouble trying to see where that blog author gets off trying to write about anything related to the word “grace,” which is defined as mercy, clemency or a pardon as well as elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action. I don’t think kicking someone while she’s down and mocking her falls under the heading of grace in any manner. Sadly, there were more blogs like that annoying attempt at “humor.” Most often, the words “knocked up” are thrown about with jokes of irony. Humor at the expense of another isn’t funny.

So why are we picking on this girl? Let’s narrow it down:

1. She just played the Virgin Mary in a movie.

2. She’s pregnant at sixteen.

And? You didn’t know a girl who was known as the “Good Girl” who ended up pregnant? Who went to church? Who read about Mary’s pregnancy? Who believed in Jesus? You’re looking at one. For Pete’s sake, I was the head angel in the Christmas pageant when I was thirteen. I was the one who got to tell of the wondrous upcoming birth. Then I went out years later and got “knocked up.” How’s that for irony? I, for one, find it sad that so many are already lining up to say that those of the Christian faith will, to quote again, “potentially discount this film as a result of the personal life of the lead actor.”

Why? WHY OH WHY?

Shouldn’t we instead, as Christians, crowd around this expectant Mother and offer her sound advice, clothing, food and help? Instead, we’ll sit around and talk about whether or not she is a sound enough role model to be playing the Virgin Mary. We will cast judgement on her character because of the fact that she had premarital sex. We will tell the world that she is not fit to be a Mother because of her age. It saddens me that the assumption that some will avoid the movie because of the actress’s early entrance into the world of Motherhood. Can you imagine the fit people would be having if she had an abortion instead? THE HORROR!

And we wonder why so many women have their pregnancies and adoption stories tainted by those who feel that it is their job to cast judgement. Let ye who is without sin…

Thankfully, not all the writers out there today were complete morons. One writer who has a view akin to my own with some individual thoughts and beliefs combatted a comment about how sixteen year old girls need to be thinking about pimples and dating with this gem:

Who tells this to a 16-year-old woman trying to come to terms with the fact she has the ability to bring new human life into the world. To such a woman pimples, boyfriends and “going out” must seem such shallow and superficial pastimes. Demeaning the greatest gift that our young women can offer the human race, and saturating them with Clearasil ads, Hollywood sitcoms, MTV and alcohol does nothing but depress and confuse them into a state of purposeless oblivion.

Of course, confusing expectant Mothers into a state of purposeless oblivion goes back as long as history. But that’s another topic entirely!

I can only hope and pray that something good comes out of this movie and this pregnancy for this newly formed family. It’s a shame that she has to live down her “sin against mankind” in the public eye. It’s a shame that the public deems it their personal mission to make this woman feel worthless and unfit.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.