I’ve tried to get us started thinking about authenticity by affirming how it’s good and then highlighting some if its limitations.
Now I want to suggest a few specific places where authenticity either does or might leave us short as a measure for the Christian life. Three areas illustrate the (possible) shortcoming: speech, forgiveness, and sex.
In response to some of my initial thoughts about authenticity, two different people shared with me some thoughts they were starting to work out about the relationship between “authentic speech” and the lives we’re called to live in Christ. One of these reflections had to do with use of “foul language,” the other had to do with what I’ll call acerbic speech or, more mildly, ungraciousness.
Part of the challenge with language is that it is culturally conditioned. Not only what a word “means” but how it communicates and its place in the shared lexicon of a society are all culturally determined. This means that in certain circles, words will not be offensive that will be in other circles, language appropriate to one context may not be appropriate in another. Moreover, there is up-side to using what is sometimes called “foul language”: sometimes, a strong word reserved for the right instance can communicate with power.
But just as often, use of such language can be an illustration of immaturity or bad judgment. The fact that all words are socially conditioned does not mean that we have carte blanche to use them however we see fit, it means that we have to read the culture we are in and choose words that function within that world in a way that matches who we desire to be.
When I speak of who we “desire to be,” I’m back to the question of eschatology: what “self” are we being authentic to? It may be that in using borderline language we are intentionally attempting to show that, for example, a legalistic expression of Christianity is inauthentic to the new person God is making us into in Christ. But it may just as well be the case that my insistence on using proverbial four letter words is illustrative of the old self with its strong, unwholesome, impure speech that refuses to leave behind what is familiar and habit in favor of the cruciform-road along which purity is pursued.
Curse words are the tip of the iceberg. There are all sorts of things that come out of our mouths, many of which are no less poisonous for all their flowery garb. In fact, it is perhaps with speech that the question of authenticity is so important to put into its appropriate context, because the assumption at several points in scripture seems to be that the mouth is as indicative of the condition of our hearts as anything else: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).
My concern is that the high value we place on authenticity might make such demonstrative mouths into an inherent good: so long as we’re speaking what we feel, we’re being authentic, and that’s what Jesus says we should expect.
But Jesus’ words point in a different direction. The first part of the verse quoted above reads, “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are evil?” It then goes on to say that the mouth speaks the overflow of the heart. What this means is that the congruity between mouth and heart can often be presumed, but it therefore becomes our job to assess the quality of those words by means other than authenticity to determine whether we speak as ones who are being transformed into the image of God in Christ or, instead, as those who are part of the viperous brood of the Serpent himself.
Jesus’ other words of correlation between heart and mouth are much to the same effect. What makes a person “unclean”? Not what goes in through the mouth and into the stomach. No, “but the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a person unclean.” Authentic words have the very real potential of reinforcing our need to be saved by the work of Jesus rather than demonstrating our participation in it.
This is, perhaps, where my second friend’s concerns came in. She was pushed to devalue authenticity as such when she saw it used as a cloak for ungracious, destructive speech. In some of the circles we both run in, this is often directed against the church and traditional ways of doing church in particular.
It is these uses of the tongue–the “I’m not gossiping, but…” conversations that are rife with gossip, the “no offense, but…” statements that introduce deeply offensive comments; the criticism, bickering, expressions of anger–that put on full display James’ warning that the tongue is a fire setting the world ablaze.
Authentic speech should be a goal–but authentically life-giving speech that refuses to use light as a masquerade for darkness, “truth” to suffocate love.
