Thoughts on Authenticity

I was recently asked to take a quiz that is meant to help you discover what things are of greatest personal value to you. It begins with a list of about 50 or so things and you are told to pick as many as stand out to you. From there you whittle it down to about 10. And from there you pick your top 5. The five remaining things are the things that you essentially value more than anything else. One of the highest things on my list was the word Authenticity. I had never really considered what this word meant to me and I certainly would not have told you it was that important to me. After considering it for some time now, it makes sense that I would value this over so many other things. In short, I would define authenticity as a real-ness and consistency of character. That character may be good or not, but the point is that it is real and consistent. But there are a few questions that come to mind about the subject that are worth looking at. What does authenticity look like in a day to day setting? Why do I value this so much in others and in myself? Is anyone truly authentic all the time? How does one grow to be more or less authentic? And what impact does the Church have, or should it have on that process? What are some groups or communities that seem to achieve more authentic cultures and why? I will do my best to answer these questions in light of my own experience, but do not claim to have the definitive answer or say on them, it is simply my own assessment.

To the first point. What does authenticity really look like in a day to day practice? Again, I believe authenticity is a consistency of one’s true character. This means that someone will not change who they are from one situation or another or from one set of social interactions to another. I don’t believe this means that everyone is everything they are all the time, but I believe the parts of themselves they express at any given time are within their character all the time. For example, I love to play with kids. Something I will often do is get down and pretend to be a gorilla, beat my chest and jump around the room with my arms waving around. They love it, they laugh and it is totally within my character to do this kind of thing. I also occasionally go to funerals. Pretending to be a gorilla because I think it is fun and kids love it is a totally inappropriate thing to do at a funeral. And while I am refraining from expressing my goofy side during the funeral, I am not sacrificing my character in doing so. In fact, the presence of mind to be considerate of that situation is an expression of another aspect of my character which is also consistent and authentic. It is the circumstance that determines which parts of who I am are expressed. An example of an inauthentic behavior would be many times in my own past when I was in a place with a group of people who were really interested in something I was not. Club dancing was a great example. My friends would love to go to night clubs and dance to very loud techno and electronic drum and base music. Everyone there was having a great time, but that music and atmosphere was not something I enjoyed. It was too loud, people were acting crazy, and I just wanted to hang out some and be able to talk to my friends instead of shouting to communicate. I, however, did my best to try and convince myself I loved being there because I did not want to be seen as a party pooper and I believed that the fact that I did not like it there was actually a flaw in my character rather than an authentic expression of it. So, I went, and pretended to have fun, as I am convinced so many others who were there also did. In that circumstance, I actively suppressed some of my character and replaced it with something that was inauthentic instead. There are so many other examples of this in my life that I could point to as examples, but I believe most of us are faced with circumstances all the time when we are tempted to be things we are not because we don’t believe the person we are is acceptable or good enough in a certain setting or with certain people. But here is a question that came up recently; what about times when I feel down or grumpy about something going on, but I am not in a situation where I feel comfortable expressing that? No one wants to walk around looking downcast or out of sorts somewhere or at work especially. Is it phony to just put on a smile and be a bit fake in order to spare everyone from observing your real state? I tend not to think so in many settings. In a professional setting, you are functioning in a job and have responsibilities to tend to that don't have much to do with your emotional state. Part of many jobs, including mine at church, is being welcoming and warm to our customers or people we serve. it is not phony to put on a pleasant face, it is simply professional. But what about cases where we are in the company of people who we should say we don't have to pretend for? thats different. I think everyone should have people they can lean on, be honest with and look to for support in those situations. I even think we should reach out to them in the midst of our professional pretending in order to seek that support. As mentioned above, there is rarely a situation where we can reasonably be 100% authentic, but we should have a range of environments and relationships that cumulatively allow us to do that across the board.

Why is this so important to me? I believe I spent the first 22 years of my life simply learning the parts I had to play and learning how to alter my character in many ways to fit the circumstances I was in. I did not filter my character, I tried to change it completely. The trouble with this is that after a certain amount of time I had developed what would have looked like alternate personalities. I remember my mother telling me that I was one person around her and, when my friends came around, I was a totally different person. She wanted me to be myself, but what she did not know is that neither person was actually me, both were constructs of who I thought I was supposed to be. I would have said, if I were honest, that I did not really know who I was at that time because I was so busy being everyone else. The trouble with this way of living is that eventually people you are close to begin to figure out that you are a phony. As my mom had discovered and as my friends would discover later, none of them really knew who I was. And my search for satisfaction in life from the evaluation of others led me to some very self-destructive behaviors that ended up dismantling every relationship I had in the world. I hurt people I thought I loved deeply because I could no longer hold my identities separate. This is why authenticity is so important to me. I have seen first-hand, the consequences and hopelessness that brews inside someone who feels like they have to pretend to be someone else all the time. And while I do my level best to remain who I really am in all circumstances, I appreciate that quality most in others as well. I believe most people are in some ways inauthentic all the time, as I’ll talk about next, but it is always refreshing to me to meet a person that Is just them, and not trying to convince you they are something else. Even If I don’t like that person specifically, I will at least like the fact that they show me enough of who they really are to be able to tell. There is nothing worse than meeting someone like I used to be, who shows you one person, then you find out after getting to know them and investing yourself in them relationally, that they were never who they really were and in turn were never really your friend in the first place. It feels like a deep betrayal of trust when you realize that this has happened, and it even makes one somewhat jaded and less likely to offer that level of trust to others later on. To step back and take a scriptural perspective on it, I think our Bible supports this perspective fully. I think of verses like Proverbs 27:19 As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects man. Or Proverbs 11:3 the integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity. And there are so many others that describe the destructive nature of the double minded person. A lack of authenticity only serves to erode and destroy relationships and bring confusion into one’s own heart as well.

The next question I have for this subject is whether or not anyone is truly authentic all the time. And my first thoughts on this is that I don’t think anyone is really 100% authentic all the time. I would think that most people fluctuate around in a range of authenticity vs phoniness. As I mentioned above, I found myself in many situations where I felt like I had to do more to pretend to function in it over other situations. I have only found that there are 2 circumstances when I am truly 100% authentic. The first is when I am totally alone in silence. The lack of social pressure or audio input forces a calm mind and release of fakeness. The second time I am truly myself is when I am in prayer alone as well. And I say alone, because I find that corporate prayer is slightly harder to be truly authentic and vulnerable. There is always that small part of me that wants to be seen as a “good prayer” and causes me to filter slightly or embellish here and there. I am sure this answer is different for all people as everyone has a different level of comfort with themselves and will show more or less based on that as well. I have found that children are most often the most publically authentic people around. I think this is one reason I love working with kids; they are always who they are. They say what they think, they do what they feel, they only pretend for fun and they have no concept of trying to impress other people to earn some kind of social status. When you meet a kid, you know you are meeting all of that person unfiltered. This quickly erodes as they age as I will get into next, but it is honestly refreshing to work so closely with so many people who are authentic by nature. The words of Christ come to mind in Matthew 18:2-3 where the kids come to Jesus, his disciples tell them to leave him alone and he says to them “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. Christ himself values the authenticity and honesty of children so much that he encourages his followers to release their own inhibitions and phoniness and come to him without reservation or doubt. And this leads to another point I will get into later as well, that it is our relationship with Christ that is the greatest expression of, and the greatest developmental tool in creating true authenticity in our life.

But first, what is the process by which we grow to be less authentic. As I propose above; everyone basically starts out 100% authentic 100% of the time, but we rarely stay that way. As we grow older it seems like we are more and more likely to fall into patterns of behavior that are less and less authentic. I think this is not a sudden change that people consciously make, though I am sure that can happen. I believe it is a slow process of compromising one’s genuine self to some external pattern of thinking or behavior. In my own past I remember feeling that pressure very early on. When I was in kindergarten I was very much care free and basically authentic as you would expect any kid to be. As a part of that, I loved super heroes. So much, in fact, that I had super hero underwear. I had Spider man, superman, hulk… Well one day I was at school with my classmates and we were playing with sidewalk chalk outside. As I was squatting down I unintentionally revealed my super hero drawers to some of the kids behind me. A girl named Tara saw this and took full advantage of the opportunity to publically mock me for my juvenile fashion choice. I was so embarrassed by this that later that day I went home, opened my underwear drawer and threw all of my childish underwear away in a fit of shame and anger at myself for being so dumb as to have not known that it was so silly to have such things. This was the first in a long line of conformity I underwent as the years went by. But I think this is a simple example of the process by which someone goes from authentic to inauthentic. It is the sacrifice of one personality trait, one decision, one mannerism or way of thinking at a time. We give in to social pressures, societal norms, direct influence of those around us as well as our own expectations of ourselves. Whatever the case is, we give in to this pressure and set more of who we really are aside, while we replace that with layer upon layer of fake-ness. And again, in my case, this led me to a point where I was not really ever sure who I actually was. All I had were these fake personas that I had learned how to be over the years. But what is really at the root of this transformation? It has to do with a lack of self-assurance, personal value and confidence in who we are. We begin to believe that who we are is not good enough in some way, and we trade that off for what we think will make us “good enough”. Many of us, including myself, are so tempted and often times enslaved to the idea that our personal value comes from what others think about us. This is why I find it easiest to be all authentic when I am alone. There is no one to impress there except me. And that brings up my last point on this, sometimes we can be so deeply devoted to restructuring ourselves that we actually begin to believe we are this new person, that we actually are someone else. The delusion can be so powerful that people will defend this persona to the core of themselves. They will never show who they really are because they have so deeply suppressed that person to the point where they may not even know they are doing it. This is especially strong when someone gets plugged in to a social group that rewards the phony persona in some way, reinforcing the fakeness and further pushing the authentic person back. This is shown in social circles like biker gangs, social clubs, gangs and even churches. People setting aside everything about themselves for the sake of blending in with a group they disparately seek the approval and attention of.

And my last question is what role or impact does the Gospel have in this situation. Honestly, I can’t see how anyone who does not have the truth of scripture in their life could ever truly reach a point of authenticity at all, or even realize that pretending to be someone else is a problem. But I will also say that, as I alluded to above, sometimes church itself can be the thing driving phony behavior if it is treated as just another social group that places expectations on people. However, I believe that the true teaching of scripture delvers real freedom from the draw toward inauthenticity in people as they understand who their savior is and what that means for them. Once again it comes down to the issue of value. If someone believes their value is based in anything other than the love of Christ, they will be pulled to conform to a way of thinking and living that is modeled after those who follow that idol. But the truth of scripture says that the God of this universe is the one who decides the true value of His created people. And what he did was to leave the comfort of heaven, enter his creation as a baby, grow up to be a man, struggle with all the same temptations we do and yet remain sinless…authentic in its midst. After this he willingly gave his life, paying the ultimate price in order to redeem his people from the curse of sin and the punishment It calls for. He soaked up the punishment for us by giving his precious son for it. It is true that God paid the highest price possible for people that, according to him, are not worth even the smallest fraction of it. While we were dead in our sins and enemies of his, he willingly loved us more than we could ever imagine. If this is true, then there is no one left to impress, and no standards left to meet. I don’t have to pretend to be anyone, for anyone, any time, because I already have the ultimate approval of the creator of the universe. We are free to be who we are because who we are is “in him”. Now does every Christian believe this all the time?... of course not. We are constantly working out our salvation with fear and trembling. Redemption is a process. Purification takes time. But surely, as the truth of the gospel sinks deeper into who we are, it will not only change who we are, but will further liberate us to proudly display who we are without hesitation or reservation toward the fake and phony practices of before. We begin to be transformed by the renewing of our minds into a more and more authentic person. And again, we may never be completely free of the urge to pretend, show off or conform to the social pressures around us, but a life devoted to loving Christ and following his teaching will grow further away from that, and closer to a Christ like and authentic one.

It seems so simple and frankly magical that the solution to all of our problems always seems to be summed up in the Gospel of Christ. But at the same time, it makes perfect sense that He would set thing up that way. If we are to put our faith at the center of our life, then that should also be the place we go TO center our life. So, I encourage you, reader, as I encourage myself. Seek Christ with all your might and find out who you really are in the process. Blessings.