It’s complicated when arguing with someone who claims they are only wanting to be true to their authentic self – because it becomes almost impossible to separate the veracity of the ideas being discussed from how that person understands their own identity. Making any challenge of their thinking an assumed assault on their very existence. This invariably derails any appeal to reason, choosing instead to make it an emotional exchange of existential pronouncements, a melodramatic sophistry of cognitively dissonant opinions which not only strain credulity but are largely incoherent . . . thereby making an intellectually honest conversation not only impossible but undesirable, altogether.
Alasdair MacIntyre describes this social phenomenon as emotivism – the idea that our feelings and experiences should be considered the essential substance of our being. An unconscious displacement of rationality by what the emotional state will allow, in regard to the formation of values and ethics. This has become our current cultural ethos, people speaking their own truth, pronouncing their own reality into existence…which inevitably creates a conflict of wills – each person establishing themselves as their own moral reference point by which all others are judged.
This concept of the authentic self was first articulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an 18th-century philosopher. Rousseau believed that the self, uncorrupted by conformity to society, was innocent and therefore could be considered the authentic self. Set aside for a moment that such a view invariably devolves into insufferable egocentric solipsism – if everyone subscribes to this view, wouldn’t that make every social interaction contentious? Asked another way – if you place yourself at the center of your own universe, where is everybody else supposed to live . . . in their own universe?
In the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), we are introduced to a young man who became disenchanted with living as everyone else did, waiting to receive an inheritance after most of their life had already been spent. He wanted to skip over this social convention and discover who he really was out in the great big world, with plenty of money and time to become his true authentic-self, unencumbered by social expectations. Needless to say, when the money ran out, and he found himself in a pigsty, with all of the illusions of his existentially pronounced authentic self dispelled – verse 17 begins with “But when he came to himself . . .”
It is in this epiphanal moment in the story, like all cautionary tales, he discovers the real truth about himself, only after he has bottomed out completely. So it turns out he did have an authentic self, but not a self-serving one contrived out of his fallen nature, rather it is the self that was created in the image of God – for it is only in God’s image where all meaning and purpose can actually be derived. And arguably, it is the incarnation of Christ, where we find the perfect expression of God’s image – so when Romans 8:29 explains that we’re ever being conformed to His image . . . then we can embrace the promise of 1 John 3:2 “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” And it doesn’t get any more authentic than that.
Being a drift may seem a romantic notion . . . until you actually are
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