Authenticity

Of all virtues, I have always held authenticity in highest regard. So much so I'd be ready to abandon a relationship in its entirety that consistently showed disregard to authenticity. I hold myself up to a high standard with authenticity in regard to my words and actions, and ultimately my being. Those are the same, though, or at least they should be. Authenticity is the place where words, actions, and one's whole being converge and become one. When words and actions contradict each other, something is broken. How unfortunate that they often do.

I am reading Henri Nouwen's The Way Of The Heart again years after I first encountered it. It feels like talking to an old mentor who is so patient with my shortcomings. A mentor who sees beyond the layers I have built around myself and calls forth my authentic self to surface. It calls forth Christ in me, who I have muffled with the noise and dailiness of life. It is certainly not incidental that Christ is the Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. John 1:1-3

It truly saddens me that we have made words cheap. Words have become shallow instead of coming from a deep place of meaning. Nouwen reflects on the same in his book. He describes our wordy world quite poignantly.

Wherever we go we are surrounded by words: words softly whispered, loudly proclaimed, or angrily screamed; words spoken, recited, or sung; words on records, in books, on walls, or in the sky; words in many sounds, many colours, or many forms; words to be heard, read, seen, or glanced at; words which flicker off and on, move slowly, dance, jump, or wiggle. Words, words, words! They form the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of our existence.

He goes on to recollect an experience of driving through Los Angeles at one time, and how he felt a strange sensation of driving through a huge dictionary.

Wherever I looked there were words trying to take my eyes from the road. They said, "Use me, take me, buy me, drink me, smell me, touch me, kiss me, sleep with me." In such a world who can maintain respect for words?

All this is to suggest that words, my own included, have lost their creative power. Their limitless multiplication has made us lose confidence in words and caused us to think, more often than not, "They are just words."

I dream of a world where we no longer will say "They are just words." A world where our words are authentic and bring forth life and meaning like they're supposed to; not because we try our best to mean what we say but because we have been so deeply touched and transformed by the Word that meaning flows out of our innermost being and we truly come to bear our authentic selves in Christ, the Saviour of the world. The words we utter would then be an overflow of truth within us.

Let us embrace the Word in our lives, and let us truly come to respect words.