How are you able to be authentic when you don’t actually know who you might be? It’s not only being an open book and expressing how you are feeling within the moment. That’s a step in the precise direction. But we’d like to acknowledge that sometimes what we feel and think is barely an expression of a false-identity. Sin has marred us. Therefore, step one in being more authentic is to know that our identity comes from God and never us.
If you ought to be truly authentic, you will have to begin together with your identity. And that’s not something you create. Galatians 2:20 says, “I actually have been crucified with Christ, and I now not live, but Christ lives in me.”
Being “crucified with Christ” is a key a part of that. It’s only when our false self dies that we’re capable of embrace our true self. The gospel is what gives us the strength to be honest. We know due to what Christ has done for us that, we’re accepted with all of our distortions. We don’t need to pretend. It isn’t some future version of us that God loves, and it’s who we’re today—warts and all. But the gospel also doesn’t keep us there. It is transformative.
Every analogy breaks down in some unspecified time in the future, but perhaps this one will help. Imagine a boy who’s playing outside and gets himself absolutely disgusting with mud and dirt. While he’s filthy like this, his mom probably won’t let him into the home to sit down on the brand new couch. He must be cleaned up. But it doesn’t mean that he’s any less her son. He’s loved and accepted even with mud throughout him. But he also must take a shower.
Now imagine that this boy began to think that his true self was because the mud-monster. While he continues to embrace this foolishness, he’ll be unable to experience the fullness of being a component of his family—no watching television on that couch whilst you’re the mud monster. But perhaps for a season, while still on this delusion, Mom might make him a palette of comfortable old blankets. She’ll relate to him, not less than in some sense, even while he’s adopted this silliness.
He’s not being authentic because he’s probably not the mud-monster. Real authenticity means accepting that he is an element of the family and he’s not meant to have all this mud on him, which suggests that authenticity will necessitate his showering. But his parents are gracious and patient they usually know that little boys don’t very similar to to shower. This is why sometimes it gets confusing since the little mud monster is an element of the family, and it looks like his silly ideas are being tolerated. And at other times, Mom is a bit sterner and practically throws him into the shower.
All of that is to say that real authenticity is harder to come back by than we would think. But someday, we can be who we truly are because we are going to see Him as He truly is.
“Dear friends, we’re God’s children now, and what we can be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we can be like him because we are going to see him as he’s.”
Some day, we are going to all be authentic.
Photo Credit: Austin Kehmeier/Unsplash
