Becoming Everyone Else
Where do we find our authentic self? How do we know if we are getting closer to authenticity. Just yesterday I was listening to a question and answer forum and one of the speakers made a very interesting comment. He said, “if you get a group of one hundred people and each of them is becoming more like Jesus as they begin to grow spiritually, they become less and less like each other as they move forward.” That is the essence of authenticity, it is moving away from becoming like everyone else.
First we must realize that the only way to true authenticity is through our creator. God had a picture in his mind before he created the world of what we were to look like and what gifts and talents he was going to bestow on each of us. This picture is our authenticity. But it is through Christ that we reach that goal. There is no other way.
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
(Ephesians 2:10 NLT)
The Power of Self Examination
How do we know that we are pursuing authenticity? How do we know that we are on the right track ? There is a simple way to look at this. Look at how we spend our time and our money. These two activities, spending time and spending money, give us a clear indicator of what we value in this life. It gives us a clear outline of our motives and what we consider to be important.
“The life unexamined is not worth living.” -Socrates
Constant self examination entails looking at our motives, our actions and our interactions. If we want to compare our lives and our actions there is only one standard to go to. We go to the truth. Jesus.
He is our standard. How are our lives measuring up to his perfect standard? We don’t look at ourselves and expect perfection, but we can all ask ourselves, “can I do better?”
Are we devoting time and energy to serving others and using our gifts and talents in a way that help other people? We can look at the idea of fruit. Spiritual fruit. Is there any evidence of love, joy, peace,kindness, patience, goodness and self control in our lives?
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”
(Galatians 5:23 NLT)
We can look at our own lives and examine our motives, our actions and our values. The last line from the verse tells us a great deal about what we are to avoid. We are to avoid being conceited, provoking and envying each other. When it comes to being conceited we are thinking about our self and our own glory and pride. When it comes to envy and jealousy, this excerpt below sums it up very nicely.
“Envy, for example, does not aim to merit anything, but it is the product of a heart that thinks it merits more than it is getting. Jealousy is not calculated to earn any pay, but it is the product of a heart that expected to be paid what went to another. In other words, the kind of heart that produces these vices is a heart that thinks of itself as creditor and everyone else as its debtors. The flesh is convinced of its own merit and expects God and man and nature to pay dues by giving the satisfaction it desires.”
John Piper
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/walk-by-the-spirit
A World of Clones
We can look at our own lives and see if there is envy for the life that others have. We can look at jealousy and see if we expect to be paid something that was given to someone else. Both do not lie in the realm of authenticity. We are focused on becoming more like everyone else.
If we go back to the very first idea and recognize that when we are pursuing authenticity by becoming more like Jesus, we become more and more like the individual that God had in mind when he created us. We become less and less like everyone else.
When we are focused on our own idea of what we consider to be a “better version” of ourselves, and we are pursuing a false or inauthentic self, we become more and more like everyone else. We easily assimilate into a group of people that think and act exactly alike. Most often pursuing the same kind of goals that are worldly and fleshly and in the end, have no value. We become clones.
In this group we focus on ourselves and we become engulfed in a world of conceit, envy, jealousy, comparison and provoking.
Just look at social media. It’s all there.