Southern Baptist news has not been heartening this week. While particularly true for Southern Baptists, it is disheartening for all followers of Christ. Lament is a proper response.
Public comments about Paul Pressler by an attorney representing the Southern Baptist Convention accentuate the injustice of sexual abuse. The attorney’s descriptions of Pressler bring to light what SBC leaders knew about Pressler and how long they knew it.
Evidence and witnesses gathered against Pressler by the Baker Botts legal team was enough to cause at least one SBC leader to say: “We can’t deny the reality of the accusations. You’ve got too many people stacked up that were ready to testify.”
Following hard on the heels of this news, the SBC Executive Committee announced the withdrawal of its latest finalist for the CEO position vacated more than two years ago. This makes the fourth consecutive failed attempt to fill that position.
No matter how you slice it, it is lamentable when key leaders are so difficult to find and place, whatever the reasons are for the failed attempts. It does not bode well for anyone.
Mixed feelings about the SBC lead to mixed responses to the recent news. Some believe the SBC is getting what it deserves. Some want to focus on the positive things Southern Baptists are doing. Others blame attacks by the devil. Others blame the media for shining a light on the negative. Still others couldn’t care less.
Whatever your response may be, lament is a proper response to recent news involving the SBC.
What is lament?
Lament is a natural response to suffering, but it’s not an American or Baptist response to anything, because it wreaks of failure. It involves tears—literal or figurative—and, we believe, focuses too much on the negative. We’re afraid we’ll get infected by it, stuck in it, drown in it.
We don’t want to lament. We want to ignore the bad or brush it off and get on with life. If we understood lament better, we might not avoid it or rush past it.
One way to define lament is agreement with God about the world’s brokenness. It is to cry out to God over injustice, pain, evil, sin. It is to long for what could be, should be, what might have been.
We can lament consciously or unconsciously.
Unconscious lament can be expressed as satire—the sharp humor somehow absorbing part of the sting—or anger—the lashing out giving a sense, however false, of regained power. Unconscious lament also can be suppressed, left to simmer and eventually expressed as bitterness, resentment, or physical or psychological maladies.
Unconscious lament inevitably leads to more hurt.
Conscious lament is on the path toward restoration.
Conscious lament is intentional. It inhabits the time and space needed to acknowledge suffering. It is an open, honest, vulnerable expression of pain looking for healing, not harm. It names the hurt, the wrong, the injustice, and it asks for the right.
For followers of Christ, conscious lament is directed to God. It looks to God for hope, salvation and restoration. It sees lament modeled in Jesus and in Scripture and seeks to pattern itself accordingly.
Why lament?
Southern Baptists lament the continuing decline in membership and baptisms. Many shake their heads at the inability to secure a CEO for the convention. But these are symptoms of things more lamentable—things Southern Baptists need to give the time and space needed for acknowledgement and lamentation.
Whatever the reason(s) may be for what’s happening in and around the SBC—whether the SBC is getting what it deserves, is being attacked by the devil or some other reason—people of God—and not just Southern Baptists—need to name the wrong and cry out to God for the right. We need to lament.
We need to agree with God about sin and injustice, including and especially that committed by Christians. We need to name the wrong to distinguish it clearly from what is right. And then we need to do what is right.
Our lament needs to be individual and corporate. Each of us needs to cry out to God within our hearts. We also need to cry out to God as a Christian community. Southern Baptists’ woes may be their own doing, but their consequences reach the whole kingdom of God. That, too, is part of the lament.
Yes, lament is grief and grieving, and when wrong is done, lament is the right and proper response. We must not avoid it or rush past it.
A lamentation
People were sexually abused by Southern Baptist leaders. Sexual abuse is a grievous wrong.
Southern Baptist leaders covered up their own abusive actions and the abusive actions of other Southern Baptist leaders. Seeking to avoid accountability for wrongdoing is itself a grievous wrong.
Lord, the wrong done by your people has opened a pit of many manifestations. There is wasting in the bones. Innocents suffer, the guilty hide, and the rest fight over correct interpretation. And the world is watching.
Lord, hear our cries. Please restore your people again for your name’s sake.
Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed are those of the author.
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