Age, anger, etc.

Some of you have told me how discouraged you feel.

Me too.

Some of you have told me how angry you feel.

Me too.

When Southern Baptist leaders STILL refuse to do anything about reported clergy child molesters, it sends a message of “We don’t care.” That’s an inherently hurtful message.

It’s salt in the wounds. It’s a slap in the face. It’s a kick in the gut.

There’s no way to feel it as anything other than that, and so I’m not about to sugar-coat it and play some pretend game with you.

But I would encourage you to ponder things from a slightly different perspective, because I do believe that progress is being made.

For starters, many reporters are much savvier now than they were just a year ago. There’s a learning curve for journalists as they try to understand how Baptist structure is different and how clergy-perpetrators can hide within that structure. Many more journalists are now much further along on that learning curve. They’re beginning to see the big picture of Baptist clergy sex abuse, cover-ups, and denominational do-nothingness.

I believe that massive media pressure is what will ultimately bring about change. So with every reporter who begins to see the problem, there is reason for optimism.

Your voices help reporters as they travel their own roads of understanding.

Many of you have written letters to the editor and comments on blogs – newspaper blogs, this blog, and other blogs. All of that makes a difference. Reporters certainly look at the comments on their own news blogs, and I know for sure that some of them look at this blog. Your voices are being heard.

When reporters interview Southern Baptist officials, they sometimes put their foot in their mouth. And every time an uncaring, ignorant or revealing remark of a Southern Baptist official goes on record, it helps others to begin to see the problem. Nowadays, thanks to more media interest, Southern Baptist officials are having to talk about this stuff more often, and so there are more foot-in-the-mouth possibilities.

All we can hope to do is to try to show that the Emperor has no clothes.

Ideally, it would be nice to imagine that the Emperor would be embarrassed and would put on some clothes when his nakedness is pointed out to him.

But we can’t make him do that. We can’t control the Emperor.

All we can do is work to help as many people as possible to see the truth.

Many more people now see that, when it comes to dealing with clergy sex abuse, the illustrious SBC is an Emperor without clothes. Nothing has changed in what the SBC does. But something is changing in the eyes of others. And that’s progress.

Now… speaking about progress… I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m unintentionally progressing through this life a little too rapidly. Let me explain. I’ve noticed that, whenever a reporter asks how old I am, I almost invariably screw up the answer. I make myself older.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s an easy question. “How old are you?” Duhhhh. Somehow I can’t get it right. And typically, I don’t even realize my error until later, when I see the article in print. Then I say to myself, “Whoa, that’s not how old I am.”

So what’s going on? I mean… I know age is mostly a state of mind, and I don’t want to get caught up in chronology, but this still seems a bit silly. Why does my mind do a mental block on this? I’m not deliberately lying. If I wanted to do that, I’d make myself younger, not older.

So here’s what I think. I think that, whenever I talk about this stuff, it makes me FEEL older, and so my mind winds up thinking it IS older. Weird.

If you’ve got some other theory on why my mind does this, let me know. Or take my online poll in the right-hand column: “Why does Christa mistakenly tell reporters she’s older than she is?”

Meanwhile, I gotta go run. That’ll make me feel a few years younger, and maybe it will all average out.

Shine on!