What Authenticity Means (And Doesn’t Mean)

“Brittany” spoke her mind at the meeting. With sharp tone and self-righteous words, she pointed out where everyone was missing it, and how things should be done differently.

Using the term “we” as a thin disguise,  she vented her personal frustration over not having things her way, then finished with the comment:

“That’s just me being honest.”

Wow, I thought. Since when does judging everyone else qualify as “honesty?”

Authenticity has become an over-used term, hasn’t it? We want to think of ourselves as honest and forthcoming, all the while being unwilling to face our own flaws.

When we insist on having a certain quality, it’s important to define said quality so we don’t just repeat popular ideas without thinking through their meaning.

So what does “authentic” mean? Here is a slice of Meriam-Webster’s  definition:

” Not false or imitation: real, actual… True to one’s own personality, spirit or character.”

Given today’s way of looking at authenticity, we could interpret that to mean you should just “be yourself” and speak your mind, and then everything would be great.

Oh, wait. That didn’t work out so well with Brittany.

That’s because there’s a root problem with this idea.

I recently received an email with this bit of wisdom from Care Net, an organization affiliated with the pregnancy center where I work:

Being “true to yourself” is arguably the highest virtue for younger generations, but is it really authentic if we’re being true to our fallen selves? When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, we lost touch with our authentic selves (i.e. the way God lovingly, wisely created us to be), and the only way to recover that is through the redemptive power of Christ.

There you have it. When your mantra is “be true to yourself,” you unleash the destructive power of your sinful nature to wreak havok in your relationships.

.

Does that sound like a good thing?

FYI, the original source of the “be true to yourself” phrase is quite ironic.

Originally, William Shakespeare penned the words, “to thine own self be true” as coming from the lips of the character Polonius in the play Hamlet.

If you didn’t pay attention in English class, you may not realize that Polonius is a big bag of wind.  He makes long, pompous speeches which mean nothing. He does not follow his own advice.

He’s an idiot.

Yet today we quote this foolish character as if his words carry great merit. As if giving voice to whatever your broken self feels like saying is somehow proof of your authenticity.

It is not.

Authenticity is about living an integrated life. It’s about being the same person at church as you are at home or at the grocery store. It’s about being whole.

To be authentic is to be humble, which means to have a correct self-assessment. You don’t grovel in self-abasement, neither do you exalt yourself above others.

If this seems impossible, it’s because it is. Due to our sin problem, Jesus Christ is the only authentic human being who has ever lived.

The rest of us are recovering hypocrites.

We sin. We need to ask others for forgiveness. We need to listen when they lovingly confront us. We need the mirror of God’s word to change us from glory to glory.

We need the redemptive power of the gospel at work in us every day, because the image of God in us is broken.

You and I are not authentic yet — but one day, in the presence of the Authentic One, we will be.