New Religion Commercial

I saw the above “PSA” recently. I found it disturbing. The one audible line in the spot comes about 25 seconds in. A teenage girl says: “I love my life. I’m not gonna mess it up with a pregnancy.”

How perverse it this?

This is not an anti-promiscuity message, but rather anti-motherhood propaganda. Why should the word “pregnancy” be associated with the ruination of one’s life? I suppose this is similar to the president of the United States’ comment that he would view a grandchild as a “punishment” and would rather his daughter murder his grandchild in the womb.

This is a commercial for a New Religion - not the Mormons, not Scientology, but something entirely different. And look how the New Religion of death has progressed.

It used to be that we, as a society, encouraged chastity. Pregnancy is a blessing - but it is best in the right context - in marriage, with two loving parents. This is why God gave us the sixth commandment and the blessing of a man and a woman being forged into one flesh. That should be the premise that drives the advice we give to young men and women.

But at some point, the message changed from encouraging chastity to encouraging “responsible promiscuity.” For a long time, the PSAs and the Hollywood/Madison Avenue message was to have “protected sex” rather than chastity. And if that is too much trouble or fails to prevent pregnancy, there is always the failsafe of abortion - of which we’ve had over 40 million in the U.S., and over a billion in the world in the last generation.

Even the pro-life side has made the mistake of fighting on enemy turf. By promoting “abstinence” instead of “chastity,” we have given the world the evil impression that Christianity is anti-sex. In fact, Christianity encourages sex, and always has: “Be fruitful and multiply” we were told from the beginning. Scripture always speaks of children as a blessing, and even in this day and age of test tubes and turkey basters, the easiest and most efficient way (and the way the God Himself designed) of procreation is best. Christians are not for “abstinence,” but rather for “chastity.” Everything has a time and a place.

Chastity, however, is antithetical to the New Religion.

But simply encouraging young people to eschew chastity and to be promiscuous is not enough for the New Religion. For religion isn’t only about deeds, but about attitudes. A true conversion is internal, hence the need to catechize the new generation of proselytes (especially young women) that “Pregnancy Ruins Lives.” There is no qualification that pregnancy is a great blessing in the proper context. For in the New Religion, it is wrong to suggest there is such a thing as a “proper context” - as that would be a confession of absolutes, of right and wrong; and would be discriminatory against single women who choose to have fatherless children, and against homosexual couples who choose to deny children a mother or a father. In both of these cases, the “parents” are more interested in their selfish desires and civil rights than in the well-being of children. In the New Religion, the traditional path is never the right path.

So, here is where we are today: “Pregnancy Ruins Lives.”

Of course, there are unintended (or perhaps “intended”) consequences. Young people now wait until they “get an education” and establish their careers before getting married and having children (if they ever get around to that). It isn’t exactly realistic to expect chastity until someone is thirty or forty years old. The New Religion thus encourages singles to engage in the very act that leads to pregnancy - making contraception and abortion all the more sacramental in the New Religion.

It also leads to extreme self-centeredness. Notice how this message uses the term “love” in a way that is antithetical to Christianity. It’s about self-love. And notice how the word “life” is also co-opted: “I love my life.” In the New Religion, love of life is demonstrated by the religious act of preventing and even destroying life. And this self-centeredness carries through to all aspects of life. Marriage is seen as a temporary arrangement, work is seen as a means to money for the satisfaction of materialism and greed, and anything that is not immediately self-gratifying is seen as a waste of time.

Hence in the New Religion, we might as well add the use of the credit card, careerism, entertainment, and divorce to the list of sacraments.

Of course, none of these are sacraments in the Old Religion, in which chastity is a commandment, selfless love is the highest ideal, committed lifelong marriage is a sacrament, children are a blessing, and sin is something to be repented of and forgiven, rather than something to be celebrated with religious zeal.

Of course, the New Religion thrives not only on selfishness, but ignorance. Hence the other part of the homily: “Stay clueless.” Death wants nothing to do with life, and the New Religion wants people to be unaware of the Old.

For this is what the New Religion wants us to be clueless of: in the Old Religion, life is a gift of the Creator and human beings are created in God’s image. Women are given the gift of nurturing life in the womb, and sexuality is also a gift from God to be used responsibly. And when we fall short of this ideal, we have a gracious Redeemer, who was not contracepted or aborted, born of a woman who was willing to “mess up her life” with a pregnancy, a Savior who forgives our sin and grants us eternal life by conquering death and its god.