Feature
4 Aug 2025

Authenticity Today

In a Sunday Times article on October 13, 2024, Gen Zers and young millennials in Singapore were interviewed on why they sought employment opportunities overseas. The caption accompanying a photo of a young man who identifies as LGBTQ reads “…making the move to Britain because he feels it is a place where he can live more authentically, both in the workplace and outside of it.”

The notion of authenticity exemplified above is to act out one’s inner convictions, or, in modern parlance, to “be true to oneself.” This definition of authenticity is arguably the one that almost all young people—including those who grew up in the church—are familiar with. And it has taken on a moral imperative. As the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor puts it, such an understanding of authenticity feeds the fear that “if I am not [authentic], I miss the point of my life, I miss what being human is for me.” (in The Ethics of Authenticity, 29)

Furthermore, in this scheme of things, society and its structures, systemic or otherwise, are necessarily restrictive since, as Gil Dueck observes, “[t]he individual self, unique and unspeakably precious, is threatened by pressures of conformity and expectation. This self must struggle to remain ‘true’ in the face of this kind of opposition.” (“Inwardness, Authenticity and Therapy,” 16)

It is easy for those of us who are neither Gen Zs nor millennials to disparage both such an understanding and those who subscribe to it, as shallow and narcissistic. After all, aren’t they the ones who invented neologisms such as selfies and OOTDs to get “likes” for their idealized online selves?  And often it is impossible to reason on the wisdom of such a stance on authenticity because, as Robert Bellah et al. observe, “one’s own idiosyncratic preferences are their own justification, because they define the true self.” (Habits of the Heart, 75)

What Christians can Learn 

However, Taylor argues that there is something of value to be gleaned from such an understanding of authenticity. At the very least, it forces the individual towards a more “self-responsible form of life… more fully appropriated as our own.” (Ethics, 74)

Indeed, a Barna survey published in 2022 in the United States found that Gen Z Christians expect “transparency, honesty and authenticity from their leaders.” (Liz Lykins, “Gen Z Christians want Leaders to Keep it Real,” in Christianity Today, March 24, 2023.)  Judging from the incidence of evangelical leaders who fall into moral sin and are subsequently exposed in disgrace, there is something to be said about Christian leaders sharing honestly with the right people about the struggles in their lives, so they can seek help before desire becomes sin. (James 1:14-15)

We can learn from our young people to value honesty over the need to maintain the respectability of institutions at all costs. After all, authenticity as congruence between professed faith and everyday living is a presupposition for the Christian. In almost every one of his epistles written to the fledgling churches in the New Testament, the apostle Paul urges believers to live lives consistent with their new identities as children of God. (Rom. 12:1; 1 Cor. 10:31; 2 Cor. 13:5; Gal. 2:20; 5:1; Eph. 4:1, 17; Phil. 1:27; Col. 3:1 -2; 1 Thess. 4:1)

What Christian Authenticity is

Conversely, we can draw attention to what Taylor has called the lack of a horizon of significance in a worldview that prizes outward conformity to inward feelings. Andrew Bunt, writing about gender identity, likewise lists the problems with an internal identity based on feelings. First, it is unstable because feelings change. Then they can be ambiguous because our feelings themselves can be in opposition. And thirdly, we would all agree that surely not every feeling ought to be acted out; what adjudicates between what is permissible and what is not? (People not Pronouns, 14)

In contrast, while the Christian notion of authenticity prizes integrity between who we are and what we do, the first part—the “who we are”—is not based on how or what we feel. Rather, it is based on our constant and unchanging identity as children of God adopted by faith in Jesus’ salvific work on the cross (Rom. 8: 14 – 17). In short, the truth of who we are does not reside subjectively in our feelings; it is in the word of God objectively, made known to us through the Spirit of God.

Hence, because the authenticity which Christians speak of is about the congruence between the spiritual reality that we are children of God by adoption and the way we live out that reality, it is more than just adhering to a system of dos and don’ts. It involves the entire transfer in the ownership of our lives. As Paul puts it bluntly to the Corinthians: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” (1 Cor. 6:19 -20)

And that is why when Christians—whether leaders or not—sin wilfully and continually, at stake is more than the issue of integrity. At stake is the basic question whether the ownership of those lives has indeed been transferred; indeed, the authenticity of the confession of faith itself. Grace there always is, but there are also those, like Demas in 2 Tim. 4:10, whose lives reveal they are “still in love with the present world”, and hence betray that “the love of the father is not in [them]”. (1 John 2:15)

Conclusion

Taylor has rightly cautioned against too hastily dismissing the prevailing notion of authenticity as merely “egoism”, “self-indulgence” and “moral laxism” (Ethics, 16) lest we burn to the ground the bridge for dialogue, since it exposes our refusal to see the good in a view different from our own. As true dialogue takes place, we who know the incredible richness and security of the identity of being children of God through Christ, can then prayerfully leave its availability on the table, confident that the light and beauty of truth will do its work to draw and transform lives towards Christian authenticity.

Dr Khaw Siew Ping is a research associate at Trinity Theological College. She has been a teacher, home-maker, and church worker involved in a variety of ministries from preaching, administration, to drama and worship ministry. Siew Ping has been a member of St. John’s – St. Margaret’s Church for more than three decades.