49 Years of Change
In 1968, Diana Ross sang "Love Child." Think about those lyrics for a minute. If you've never heard it before google the lyrics right quick.
Now compare the thinking in that song to today's thinking. Wow, right? How did we as a society move from a "love child" feeling "afraid, ashamed, misunderstood" to the parents themselves feeling no such shame, fear or guilt that the song talks about?
Now, don't try to put words in my mouth. I'm not suggesting that we should make children feel somehow less of a person, because of their parents' sin. What I want to know is why the parents don't feel guilty.
I'm not one who thinks parents should rush to get married, because they got pregnant. I think a bad marriage only makes things worse for the kids. Not everyone agrees with me, but I have seen kids all too many times who have gotten caught between two parents fighting constantly. It is as hard or harder on the kids. On the flip side of that I had a friend who got pregnant when she was eighteen, and they rushed to get married. Cancer sent her home to Jesus just this past year, but they were still happily married over thirty-seven years later.
Ok, for now, put away the debate of what steps they should take now that they have gotten pregnant out of wedlock. What are the feelings attached to getting pregnant out of wedlock?
These days? It has become common place. Some purposely get pregnant without marrying the father first. Something we see everyday, we are all too easily becoming desensitized.
It is no longer something that people are ashamed of. They feel no guilt. Why is that? It is a sin just as much as lying, coveting, adultery, gluttony, and so many more, yet it is no longer attached to the guilt that we would expect with other sins. Why?
It has been almost fifty years, and the way the world views out of wedlock pregnancies has morphed into something that fifty years ago no one could have identified.
The whole gist of the song is that she doesn't want to put a child through the difficulties she had lived as a "love child." The viewpoint from the song is to learn from the past. We've had 49 years of change now, and what have we learned from our past?
Wow. What more can you say?
