Be Authentic

On July 21, 1989, the R & B band, Milli Vanilli, suffered a painful and severe unmasking before an audience of roughly 80,000 fans as the band participated in a live Club MTV concert in Bristol, Connecticut. The discomforting moment came as band members Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan “performed” the song, Girl You Know It’s True. The technology playing the music and vocals failed, causing the song to enter a loop resulting in a repeat of the phrase, “Girl you know it’s Girl you know it’s Girl you know it’s.” In a panic, Pilatus fled from the stage, as other members of the troupe attempted pretending to play and sing along with the looping failure.

Following the failure, MTV Video Jockey, Downtown Julie Brown, persuaded Pilatus and Morvan to return to the stage and finish the concert, but the unraveling had begun. As time pressed forward details revealed that Pilatus and Morvan did not sing a single note on the group’s debut album, and that they were hired, specifically, to perform as dancers and models. Milli Vanilli was compelled to return their “Best New Artist” Grammy Award, as their producer, Frank Farian was forced to admit that the duo was merely “window dressing” and that all of the tracks on their award-winning album were sung by studio vocalists, singers who would later be interviewed on the Oprah Winfrey television program.

Pretense is Everywhere

Hypocrisy, pretense, and deception are as old as Adam and Eve biting the fruit in the garden while pretending they did not do so. People from all walks of life play themselves off as something or someone other than who and what they are. And, yes, this happens in the church, the body of Christ, where expectations of integrity are absolute. Violations of that integrity erect barriers of suspicion and doubt, making genuine, trust-based relationships an impossibility.

The character, Jaques, in William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It is famed to have said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Ralph Waldo Emerson made the following statement regarding pretense in his Essay, Friendship.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” in Essays: First Series (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1841), 198.

Emerson’s grievance asserts that the genuineness and transparency required for true friendship is rare, and there are few will drop their guards and simply think aloud. Yet, this is exactly what is required in the body of Christ. I can understand the need to keep one’s guard up in the harsh environment of the world, but the body of Christ should be that one place where the crusty masks of pretense can fall off without fear of judgment or rejection. I’ll talk more about that in a moment.

Love must be free of hypocrisy. Detest what is evil; cling to what is good.
– Romans 12:9, NASB

If love is our highest aim,¹ if love is the new commandment from Jesus,² and love is free of hypocrisy, then authenticity among believers is of paramount importance.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
– Romans 12:9, NASB

Jesus unleashed one of his most scathing rebukes against the scribes and Pharisees, specifically noting their hypocrisy—showing that pure, clean, outer facade while being filled with all manner of ugliness.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
– Matthew 23:27-28, ESV

The Dead Bones in Me

It is an easy and common mistake to read something like what Jesus said above and think, “Yeah, boy! He really let them have it.” When I’m sitting in the congregation, and the preacher is delivering his message, he’s not talking “them.” He’s talking to me. That message is for me and about me. It is for my learning, my growth, my maturing. When Jesus says, “Don’t engage in pretense,” he is talking to me.

But we’re afraid.

We Fear Rejection

There is a greeting most of us participate in that, to me, has become a single word: “HowsItGoinFine.” I recall an incident from more than forty years ago wherein a man greeted me, extending his hand to me at the church building entryway and saying, “Fine…fine. How are you?”

I didn’t ask him anything! He just assumed the obligatory question had been asked and had to be answered. This routine has become so embedded in Western society that we ask such questions knowing there will be no response.

The younger generation will initiate a conversation with the question, “How’s it goin’?” or “Whassup?” without even pausing to allow a person to answer the question.

“Whassup, man. Hey, umm, I need to talk to you about…”

What would happen if, when asked, “How’re you doin'” or “How’s it goin'” you actually began to answer the question? Chances are your response would be unexpected and, most likely, not well received. When working at Kansas University, I became acquainted with a student who habitually gave such a response when asked, “How’s it goin’, Michael?” I knew that I would invest the next three to five minutes listening to him tell me just how it is, or how it was going. Michael didn’t have many friends.

We are a society that has become so comfortable with superficiality that two-dimensional relationships are the rule rather than the exception. We interact by offering responses that are expected rather than authentic.

You’re not who you think you are. And, you’re not who I think you are. You’re who you think I think you are.
– G. K. Self

Current generation culture values image over transformation. This demands that people perform. We dress up our image, whitewashing our tombs because surrendering and changing on the inside is difficult and frightening. We reason that it’s safer to keep all that inner unpleasantry hidden.

We Fear Comparison

Take a moment and ponder Jesus’ many interactions with the Pharisees and the scribes. Jesus needed no masks because Jesus knew who he was and was at peace with who he was. The scribes and Pharisees, however, were the whitewashed tombs, full of dead men’s bones. The scribes and Pharisees were driven by comparison, position, and status. They lived and performed in a society that was driven by comparison, position, and status, much like our own society is.

We fear comparison if that comparison is based on reality and truth, so we manipulate the factors used in the comparison. We hide and misrepresent those realities that would cause us to score low in the comparison exercise, while accentuating or even distorting elements that would tend to ennoble our social positioning.

The Antidote

Returning to my nod toward authenticity in the body of Christ, I have seen gatherings of believers where transparency before the body was demanded. I find such demands damaging and distasteful, particularly when those demanding full transparency fail to be transparent themselves. Please understand that there is an essential difference between transparency and authenticity. Transparency is living in a glass house where everyone can see everything that is going on inside me. Authenticity is living in a standard home where I invite in whomever I choose.

When asked, “How are you doing, Damon,” transparency mandates that I open the floodgates and let all the water flow freely, drowning you with the full and unambiguous answer to your question. Authenticity answers that same question truthfully but, perhaps, not fully. “I’m doing well for the most part, while struggling with a few things that I’m not prepared to go into right now.” That is an authentic, truthful answer, and a far cry from “Howsitgoingfine.”

There are times when a member of the body will choose to be open about specific struggles, sins, fears, and more, and will do so before the entire body of believers. When this happens, high grace is required. With a nod to my own weakness and failures, I must extend grace to that brother or sister who has reached the point of exposing themselves in this way as an exasperated cry for help. Remember, the church is a hospital for the injured and damaged, not a museum for the pious. When a culture of grace permeates the body, authenticity drowns out performance.

The Worst Pretense of All

When I was in high school, I worked as an auto-mechanic at a service station on Interstate 70. One afternoon a woman pulled into the station needing some service on her car, and as I was getting the details and beginning my diagnosis, she came around the front of the car carrying some proof sheets of skanky photographs of herself. As she did so, she remarked, “…but don’t tell anyone. I’m supposed to be a Christian.” These where pre-Christian days for me, and I had no idea who this woman was. Even so, that struck me as an exceedingly strange remark for her to make.

Someone like that woman above is an easy pretender to spot. Other pretenders are more subtle, but their ultimate outcome is just as sad as that of the woman above.

In Peter’s first letter, following his opening greeting, he launches into an outpouring of praise, something that could be set to music. He says the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be blessed because he has extended us great mercy to give us a living hope through Christ’s resurrection. We are being given an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, and in that we greatly rejoice.³ And here is the key, and also the tie-in for the pretense concept. The authentic Chirst-follower rejoices, even in the midst of trials, knowing that those trials serve a purpose.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
– 1 Peter 1:6-7, NIV-1983

The trials you face and endure as a Christ-follower come with the purpose of proving your faith is genuine. Think about the pretender. How do they respond when the trials come? The trials wash over them and they bail out with ease. To them, it’s not worth it. But for you, Christ-follower, the trials have the opposite effect. They refine you and they prove your faith is genuine. Your faith has integrity.

While we have no control over the behavior of others, we have total agency over our own integrity. God already sees behind any mask we might choose to wear, loves us anyway, and invites us to step out of the performance and into his rest.

This week’s blog posting is a call for authenticity. Be genuine. Be sincere. If you need help ask for help. If you’re struggling, say you’re struggling. If you can offer help, help without judging. Be gracious and gentle. Be true.

Blessings upon you, my friends.

Victoriously in Christ!

– damon

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1. 1 Corinthians 14;1
2. John 13:34
3. 1 Peter 1:3-6a