Authentic
It’s one of those words that in my prior church experience was perhaps not taken seriously enough. What does it really mean to be “authentic” in the Christian context?
According to Merriam-Webster to be authentic is to be “not false or imitation : real, actual“.
Until recent years, I hadn’t really understood what that meant or how to do it.
And then I read Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. I read Mark Driscoll’s Confessions of a Reformission Rev. G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. And suddenly, I started to understand - I saw how each grappled with their faith, with Jesus, with their church, with how they perceived themselves and how they were perceived by others in the Christian community and I could relate to their issues.
However I still didn’t know how to do it myself. It was not something that I grew up learning how to do (nor, in retrospect, was that encouraged, but that would be the subject of a much lengthier post), and to be honest, I’m not sure that I knew that I needed to be able to do it in the first place.
Until…I came face-to-face with men in my local community who encouraged me to be real with them. Perhaps encourage is the wrong word. These men demanded it of me, and I demanded it of them. More to the point - our faith demanded (and still demands) it. If I am to grow in my walk in Jesus, I need to confront my own weaknesses and be held accountable by Him - and He does that through other folks. With me, He has certainly done that in the company of the brothers I now keep.
In recent weeks I have seen many of my brothers be very real about their lives, the way I have been with them. In each circumstance…
…we listened.
…we encouraged.
…we prayed.
It was real.
It was authentic.
It was Jesus meeting each of us at his moment of pain.
And it was very good.
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