Last night we took the evening to look at what the scriptures teach about another idea that’s really important to many of us these days–the big idea of Authenticity. Here are the notes:
The cultural ideal of “Authenticity”
Any street-level definition of authenticity is going to include words like genuine and real, or the idea of being honest about what’s inside, or being true to yourself. Or maybe we could say it like this: Discovering what’s in your heart, how you really feel about things, and then living to express that.
The opposite of this kind of Authenticity is being “fake” or “scared” or “untrue to who you really are.” The idea is that if you’re not authentic, you’ll live your life pretending to be someone you’re not. In our world, this might be the biggest injury you could do to yourself. And to make someone do it—to deny them the ability to express their heart—is the biggest possible evil.*
(*One Note: There’s a glaring point of cultural hypocrisy in this: We in America absolutely do have things which we tell people not to live out. If someone feels racist inside, or if they think they’re fat when they are really skinny (eating disorders), or if they have sexual attraction to children, or if they feel violent whenever they get angry, or if they feel like being careless with the environment, or if they feel selfish as a CEO and want to steal money from workers, or if they feel like injuring themselves helps them—we tell them they must resist those feelings and not live them out. We actually want to prevent them from being able to be authentic with those feelings, no matter how deeply rooted those feelings are. No one seems to ask what standard we use to decide who gets to be “authentic” and who doesn’t, and who gets to decide what the standard is, and why we feel justified in denying some people the right to authentically live out their feelings.)
But ignoring that point of inconsistency, the idea that has taken us all over these days is the ithought that the only way to be truly happy, and the only way to make the world a better place, is if we all just discover what’s in our hearts, be honest about that, express it in any way we want to, and make our lives all about discovering and expressing ourselves.
Now, Is this what Jesus teaches? Is this what followers of Christ believe? What does a disciple come to learn about this idea of authenticity, and how it should or shouldn’t be part of their thinking?
Hearing the Scriptures.
Proverbs 18:2 – It is foolish to want to express what’s inside more than receive knowledge of what is true. In fact, those two loves (the love of receiving truth and the love of expressing your heart) will cancel each other out. (See also Proverbs 17:27.) “Expressing” should be “exposing” – it’s the same word as Noah in Geneses 9:21. There’s an exhibitionism in this.
“The Fool” in the scriptures someone who decides in his heart God doesn’t matter (Psalm 53:1), and therefore doesn’t care about wisdom, loves sinful things, becomes harmful to himself (often without even knowing it) and a menace to society (even if society doesn’t recognize it).
“The Heart”: “‘Heart’ is the term most commonly used in biblical literature for the essential personality. Whereas in English ‘heart’ tends to connote emotion, in both Hebrew and Greek it conveys equally, and perhaps more strongly, the spiritual and intellectual processes, including the will. It refers to what makes people what they really are, their individuality.” [R.T. France] “The heart feels all modes of desire, from the lowest physical forms, such as hunger and thirst, to the highest, spiritual forms, like reverence and remorse…[The] direction or bent of the heart determines its decisions and thus the person’s actions.” [Bruce Waltke]
Proverbs 18:2 – It is foolish to want to express what’s inside more than receive knowledge of what is true. In fact, those two loves (the love of receiving truth and the love of expressing your heart) will cancel each other out. (See also Proverbs 17:27.) “Expressing” should be “exposing” – it’s the same word as Noah in Geneses 9:21. There’s an exhibitionism in this.
Proverbs 28:26 – You can’t trust your heart. Trusting your heart is the opposite of Proverbs 3:5-8. (See also Jeremiah 17:9-10. The heart is deceptive, and Proverbs 10:20 some hearts are worth little!)
Proverbs 29:11 – To simply vent your spirit is foolish. “Spirit” here has the idea of dynamic life force.
Psalm 73:12-15 – There are ways of thinking that would be hurtful to other people.
Mark 7:21-23 – Jesus, along with Jeremiah, tells us why these proverbs are true. Out of our hearts come things that “defile” – that is, separate us from God. So our hearts may be full of things that it is better not to express. The follower of Jesus wants to find out what Jesus has to say about his heart, and then get his heart changed…
Summing up:
So…since the heart is deceptive, and actually full of evil things, it’s foolish to trust it, rather than trusting the Lord and seeking understanding from him. Instead, we should make our hearts trust God, and not themselves. Or to say to another way, we should trust God, rather than our own hearts. Then God educates us about what things in us need to go, and we’ll learn that not expressing some things is better than expressing them. We won’t make the mistake that expression itself is good.
In a sentence: The follower of Jesus lets Jesus decide what things should be expressed and what things should not.
So what then? Should we be inauthentic?
Proverbs 10:18 – A case study. If there’s hatred in my heart, should I hide it? Well, the answer is not simply to let hatred out. That’s the second half of the verse. It is foolish to simply let hatred out of your heart and go around slandering people.
The bible’s not simplistic here. Imagine the bad logic this Proverb might be addressing:
- There’s hatred in my heart.
- If I act like there’s not, it makes my life a lie.
- I don’t want to lie…I want to be real, so I let the hatred come out of my mouth. At least I’m being authentic, because I’m being true to what’s inside.
- No, the bible says, that’s foolish.
So what’s the implied solution? Get the hatred out of your heart! Just because you find something in your heart doesn’t mean it’s good. This proverb is telling us: “Don’t just keep sin in your heart and try to hide it by acting like it’s not there. That’s hypocrisy. And don’t just let sin live in your heart and express it so at least you’ll be authentic. That’s foolish.” And Jesus calls that sin. No, the implication of this proverb is, get your heart fixed! Get a heart that’s not full of the thing in Jesus’ list—the anger and violence and sexual perversion and selfishness and envy and pride and disdain for others.
How do we get our hearts fixed? See Ezekiel 11:19-21, 36:25-27. We become members of God’s new covenant, and we receive God’s Spirit.
When this happens, we have a new heart which will lead to us expressing new things with our lives—things which match God’s desires, not our old godless desires. See Romans 8:4-9. We now express things with our lives which please God. Now…this will absolutely being honest and open about our failures, at the right times, to the right people, for the sake of our own growth and also to honor the bigness of God’s grace. James 5:16. In fact, I think this is where you realize that much of what passes for authenticity these days is actually just image management.
So here we have it—does God want us to be hypocrites, or to be closeted all the time, or to be fake, or to live ashamed of who we are? No! …So then does that mean that he invites us to express whatever we find in our hearts, so we can be authentic? No again! He invites us to give our hearts to him, to trust him with our whole hearts, and to have our whole being completely renewed by a new relationship with His Spirit, and let his Spirit teach us his commands, so that what is on the inside is pleasing to God, and what is on the outside matches what’s on the inside—in other words, what comes out of us pleases God too. God’s focus is not simply on authenticity, but on renewed, healed, whole humanity.
Now how does someone who has had this happen to them talk? What do they represent? See 2 Corinthians 4:5. We don’t preach ourselves! We preach Christ. Authentic Christianity is not Christians who go around telling everyone how they feel and promoting themselves. Authentic Christianity is being people who are so full of God’s spirit and healed of the pride and sin that ruins everyone that we love to talk about and promote Jesus and all of his glory and love to everyone. We just stop thinking about ourselves and how we feel all the time. We’re thinking about how great Jesus is, and we want everyone else to see it too.