Too young to be taken seriously?

It is fairly disheartening to have a vision but no means to achieve it. Barriers seem to multiply the closer you get to true revelation, but none is so discouraging as age. It seems like everywhere I turn lately I am confronted with the fact that my young age keeps people from taking what I have to say seriously.

It is a problem that I have faced most of my life. I have always been a dreamer…maybe not like Joseph, but my dreams have been big. I know what I want for my life. I know the things I want to do. I know the things I want to say. Since high school I have known that I am destined for something greater than myself.

That all might sound a little melodramatic, but it is the truth. And I’m tired of people hearing me explain these things and then asking how old I am or looking at me with a face that says, “You’ll learn when you’re a little older that it doesn’t work that way.”

Well I want to change the way it works. For many years this desire to be an agent of change has dominated my narrative. At first I wanted to help change the Southern Baptist Convention. That desire was quickly crushed. Then I wanted to help change the way my university looked at Christianity. I got some traction on that, but in the end I’m not sure I made much of a difference. These days, I want to be an agent of change in the greater religious discourse, to be a storyteller of sorts as part of some great meta-narrative. I want to help foster conversation, not so that we may all agree, but that we may all be heard.

I think most often of the words of Audre Lorde:

"The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken."

You would think that living and working in a community of faith would make this easier. In some ways it is harder. If you don’t have a Master of Divinity or are not ordained, church-folk are less inclined to hear what you have to say. Additionally, age plays a huge role in the keenness of those older than you to take you seriously. It is funny how willingly people of faith ignore 2 Timothy 4:12. Let no one look down on me because I’m young? I’m trying. I really am.

Yet I can only do so much for so long. At some point you lose your desire to have an opinion. I can only continue to dream, continue to blog, continue to voice my opinion until the ears it falls on are no longer deafened by social constructs building up hierarchies of age. I have always wanted to be a part of a revolution, but as time has gone on, my reasons have changed. It’s no longer just for the sake of being revolutionary.

There is change I want to see, change of which I want to take part. Hopefully, one day, when I am not too much older, I’ll reach a point where other people will hear of my dreams and affirm not only my right to dream them, but my desire to see them made tangible.