We live in a time when personal branding and carefully curated social media profiles are commonplace. That is not reality, but at best a carefully edited version of it. Authenticity stands in contrast to being counterfeit, to being a hypocrite. People who say they believe in some ideal for social acceptance, but do not, are inauthentic. It’s true that we all fall short of our ideals. That’s tragic. But to pretend to believe what you do not, that is dishonesty.
Being authentic means having your life in alignment with your true self, values, beliefs, and motives. It involves seeing yourself for who you are, what you do well, and less well, and having the humility and courage to share that in the world, even in the face of pressures to perform and to conform. In simpler terms, authenticity is being honest with others about who you are, warts and all.
Faced with our inability to live up to our ideals, we have a choice if we want to be authentic. We can live in the acknowledgement that we need grace and forgiveness and keep trying to do right, or we can discard the ideal altogether. Today, authenticity often means the latter. To be authentic means, for many, to sin proudly, with no regret, no shame. The humble person is able to admit wrong and receive forgiveness while the proud insist there is nothing to forgive.
Clean the inside
25“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Jesus in Matthew 23, NIV
At the juncture between admitting our fallenness or embracing our sin, Jesus calls us to work on our hearts so that our authentic self can be closer to who we ought to be.
Reflection
- What is something I pretend to be, but am not?
- Stop pretending. Don’t move the goal lines.
- Ask God and others for forgiveness.
- Consider prayer, fasting, and targeted disciplines to address the disordered desires in our heart.
Auden
“Reflections in a Forest”, Homage to Clio, Random House.
Our race would not have gotten far, Had we not learned to bluff it out And look more certain than we are Of what our motion is about.