Skip to main content

Is Feeling Authentic Important?

Brett McCracken asks some great questions about the present "authenticity" movement among Evangelicals in his article: Has ‘Authenticity’ Trumped Holiness?


Erik Thoennes, professor of biblical and theological studies at Biola University, sees the authenticity trend in the undergrads he teaches. At the beginning of each class he asks his students to write down two things they love and two things they hate. Consistently, one of the things they say they hate is “fake people.” But the Christian life involves a whole lot of “fakin' it” on the path to being integrated, Thoennes says.

“There's this idea that to live out of conformity with how I feel is hypocrisy; but that's a wrong definition of hypocrisy,” Thoennes said. “To live out of conformity to what I believe is hypocrisy. To live in conformity with what I believe, in spite of what I feel, isn't hypocrisy; it's integrity.”

Thoennes hopes his students understand that sanctification involves living in a way that often conflicts with what feels authentic. Still, he gets why younger evangelicals have such a radar for phoniness. They grew up in an evangelical culture that produced more than a few noteworthy cases of fallen leaders and high-profile hypocrisy. Their cynicism reflects a church culture that often hid its imperfections beneath a facade of legalism and self-righteousness.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Ready for Friday

Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him, and say, "Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not." --Martin Luther
Post a Comment
Read more

Families' Fridays

From Focus on the Family 10 helpful tips for single parents Imagine this: you’re the sole parent for your children. You get them up, get them fed and send them to school. You do the housework, maybe you go to work yourself, you get home and you’re still the only adult there. There’s no one to relieve you. No one to pass the baton to while you take a shower or take a few minutes for yourself. You make dinner and gather the family around the table to eat. You play with them, read to them, give them baths, get them to bed and there’s no one there to sit with and process your day. There’s no one there to laugh with you or pray with you. Instead you keep working. You clean up the house again. You pack lunches for the next day. And you eventually crash into bed, knowing you’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. For many, this is not an imagined scenario. When you parent alone – whether due to divorce, the loss of your spouse or having a spouse who works away from home for long periods of...
Post a Comment
Read more

The walking, talking providence of God

Today I met a man in Israel I will never forget.  Fifteen years ago he was voting in a primary for candidates of the Likud party.  At the polling station, two Palestinian terrorists burst in upon the crowd who were choosing their candidate for the next election.  They sprayed the crowd with automatic gunfire.  Seven people fell to the floor, wounded by the barrage.  The terrorists moved among the fallen, stopping to shoot each one between the eyes to make sure that they were dead.  Six people died that day.  Today I met the seventh. He was wounded four times in the initial burst of gunfire - once in each leg, once in the arm and once in the side.  The terrorists then put a gun two feet from his face and put a bullet between his eyebrows.  I saw the deep scar with my own eyes.  The next year he spent in a coma. Today I met him at the little restaurant he owns outside the gates of the ancient ruins of Beth She'an.  He stood in f...
Post a Comment
Read more