authenticity on Mental Health

A Leadership Coach’s Perspective I make it a habit to study what’s happening in churches across the country. I get the honor of coaching some incredible pastors, so I need to stay fresh. Any time I’m...

In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko describes one of the many paradoxes that come with depression: how ...

When I can, I do my best to keep up the farce of who I pretend to be. [while suffering from severe depression]

Far too easily we settle for holiness rather than wholeness, conformity rather than authenticity, becoming spiritual rather than deeply human, fulfillment rather than transformation, and a journey tow...

The ancient Greek word for actor was hypocritēs (ὑποκρῐτής), which, at first, only implied someone who explained or interpreted something. But by New Testament times, it was more negative. It suggest...

It is a spiritual disaster for a man to rest content with his exterior identity, with his passport picture of himself. Is his life merely in his fingerprints?

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities he does not possess.

We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...

As the modern day person struggles with the baffling question of his own existence… science falls short of providing full answers… it can tell how, but not why.” Coleman adds, “Despite their fine auto...

It is my belief that we’re currently in the middle of a cultural overdose on authenticity—but without that necessary companion of vulnerability. I love that we’re all being so authentic and genuine. B...

Every movement toward the humiliation of the false self, if we accept it, is a step toward interior freedom and inner resurrection.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was just getting started, vulnerability was not a high value. Things have changed. But with a higher value on transparency, authenticity, and vulnerability in the church,...

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

Pastor: Who are you? Ministers: We are God’s people, called by God’s love in Jesus the Christ, not because we are adequate or worthy, but because of God’s ac­ceptance of us. Pastor: Why have you c...

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...

The false self plays its deceptive role, ostensibly protecting us but doing so in a way that is programmed to keep us fearful—of being abandoned, losing support, not being able to cope on our own, not...

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You ...

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

Busyness allows us to avoid the deepest questions of our souls. It keeps us at arm's length from our truest, most authentic selves. And when we don't know our deepest, most authentic selves, w...

Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality,...

We disappear because we are uncomfortable with being in process.

Do we honestly believe that the best witness we can have as Christians before a watching world is to show moral perfection? While that might convince some, our odds of pulling it off seem less than sl...

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

How is genuineness expressed? Not in words. What you say to your partner is far less important than how you say it—with a smile, a shrug, a frown, or a glare. Consider this: nonverbal communication ac...

Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a true friend as a person with whom I can think aloud. This absence of the need to put on a façade is an essential and foundational aspect of all genuine friendships. He ...

It’s a wild and wonderful thing to bump into someone and realize it’s you.

There was a basic logical paradox that I called the 'fraudulence paradox' that I had discovered more or less on my own while taking a mathematical logic course in school...The fraudulence para...

Erik Thoennes, professor at Biola University and elder at Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada, California, sees the authenticity trend in the undergrads he teaches. At the beginning of each cla...

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though ...