Quotes about Authenticity

The best bit of advice I ever received about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up.

God is far too real to be met anywhere other than in reality.

Even worship is less important than Jesus. In fact, worship can become an idol in the church. Some Christians probably worship worship more than they worship Jesus. Some worship leaders probably worship worship-leading more than they worship Jesus. It was never meant to be an industry, a genre in Walmart, a karaoke show on Sunday. If you really want to lead worship, learn to wonder.

Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest.

A relationship based on trust means not walking on eggshells, but talking openly, honestly, with no hint of passive-aggressiveness or any of the other dysfunctional manipulative tactics we tend to impose on family and friends.

Being "in" with God is about much more than the thoughts we keep in our heads, the belief systems we hold on to, the doctrines we recite, or the statements of faith we adhere to, no matter how fervently and genuinely we do so, and how important they may be.

I believe that God is more interested in the who. And that means walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Better: it means walking the walk when no words are left. That is trust.

I hear Aslan's words to Shasta: "'Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story. . . . I tell no one any story but his own.

Rather than defining faithfulness as absolute conformity to authority and tribal identity, a trust-centered faith will value in others the search for true human authenticity that may take them away from the familiar borders of their faith, while trusting God to be part of that process in ourselves and others, even those closest to us. The choice of how we want to live is entirely ours.

And it's always a bad move to invent a Jesus who agrees with us rather than challenges us.

What could be more normal than for different people, living at different times, in different places, who wrote about the past for different reasons and to different audiences, to produce different versions on the past? Nothing. And that's what we see in the Bible.

We can't believe what we believe to be untrue, and we can't love what we believe to be unreal.