We remember that Mary was sixteen or so years of age when she became pregnant. Sixteen was a common age for girls to marry. Pregnancy in mid-teens in the ancient world was common. In traditional patriarchal homes, girls were well taught from early years, what their role was to be in intimacy with their husbands; in the care of the home; and, in the rearing of children. That was, for the vast numbers of women, the whole of their natural lives. By current standards, adolescence holds during the teen years, and, during my lifetime, has extended into college years. If we nurtured our children as the ancients did, we might modify our current opinions.
As a father of two daughters, I would have been distressed if one of them had told me she was pregnant when she was sixteen years of age. That disappointment would not only be spiritual but natural, not because she was perceived too young to give birth, but that she was not prepared for the occasion. Our era has delayed, even dropped, domestic orientation for children. Our times are not patriarchal (structured by elders) and undeveloped, but casual (independent of objective sources) and developed only casually. Education is mostly formal, accomplished on progressive schedule related to intellectual skills like reading/writing. We have no evidence that Mary learned to read or write. Her education was from verbalization with her parents, and the provisions of the synagogue for women. Her life formed well in a devout Jewish home context. She was a good girl, giving honor to her elders. By current standards her future was quite limited.
The questions raised by Mary to the angel announcing the condition of pregnancy shows the kind of attitude one might find in a devout young person, troubled with an epiphany, when the training of that person had included so much of Scripture and God’s participation in the life of families. Should such an event occur in our time, the young lady would likely run screaming in fear. Why? The preparation of our children is so radically different that we may not understand the light and dark differences. The children of many former generations were not treated as adolescents, but as little people, on their way to becoming big people. They were the future for family and society. Children were taught virtue, duty, work, love, and family/community. They did not have time to waste or excesses to follow. They did not have independent funds, and multiple choices. Parents were responsible to make good family citizens of them. Life was difficult, but simple.
During 2003 a film appeared entitled, Thirteen, in which the newly adolescent female teenager declines into drugs, sex and crime. The actress playing the part refuted statements of viewers that this carnal, undisciplined life could not be what children are doing. For many she said, it was worse in real life than the sordidness portrayed in the movie. She noted that some of her own friends, approaching sixteen years of age heightened the problem, getting into clubs, wearing really revealing clothing, sleeping with everything that moves, doing lots of drugs. She added that there is the addition of the driver’s license which, by implication, meant ever expanding opportunities for self-destruction. If all the remarks of critics hold, there will be reduced opportunity, in our era, to find any young woman of the spiritual maturity of Mary. Our problem includes common abdication of adults from parent and community responsibility. God’s effective families are concerned to weigh, perhaps counter, society’s context. We discover that parents are ineffective in teaching self-discipline, and modern society is ineffective in law enforcement and soft on values. All persons need a taught code of values. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020