11-year-old gives birth

A couple of days ago FoxNEWS’ Martha MacCallum was apoplectic over the news that an 11-year-old girl had given birth. She had guests Dr. Manny Alvarez and psychologist Dr Keith Ablow on to comment. Both discussed how awful this was and listed a plethora of physical and emotional trauma that can come with an 11-year-old giving birth.

And I guess to some extent this is somewhat sensational in our day and age.

Historically though, this would not have been unusual.

Jesus mother is widely believed to have been about 13 when she gave birth to him. So did God impregnate a 12 or 13-year-old? What kind of physical and emotional trauma did God inflict on her?

We include in our Bibles a rather erotic sonnet written by a 45-year-old man to his 13-year-old bride. Imagine if a 45-year-old in your church wrote something even mildly like Song of Solomon to a 13-year-old girl in your church’s youth group. Why do we include such a horrible thing in our Bible?

Well, despite all of the hand wringing the 11-year-old girl is apparently both physically and emotionally OK and the 5 lb baby is reported to be very healthy. We will likely inflict far greater trauma on his girl by making a big deal out of it than she would otherwise experience. We are a pious lot aren’t we?