About Project Diktuon
Pulling the Fish Together
Authenticity – Being Who He Created Us to Be

You don’t have to be nuts to belong to this network – but it does help.

Authenticity is being who we are. God Is Who He Is, and when He created man to be His image, He wanted that we, too, would be who we are, authentic.

Authenticity is about who we are, not what we do. God is a being, He Who Is, and He wants to turn us into the likeness of His Son, people who are. Being who one is is being authentic. God is Authentic and that’s what He wants to turn us into.

Authenticity is being real. God is the supreme realist. And he wants us to be real, too. There’s no point in pretending to an omniscient being. The only way God wants us to face Him is as we are. And He wants that we always act accordingly. If He is not happy about something in us, it is He who can and wants do something about it. We must not rush nor procrastinate to transform our lives out of His pace. We have to face Him genuinely as we are, every day. And let Him make the difference in us.

Authenticity is expressing the character of Christ. His humbleness, forgiveness, openness, freedom, creativity, courage, integrity and discipline. Authenticity is creativity. Art in the deepest sense of the word.

The foundation of our authenticity is our being in Christ, in His death and resurrection. When we are in Jesus, who is the Son of God, we are spiritually living the life of God’s child. When this life gets increasingly room in our lives, His new life starts to manifest more in our lives. The only thing we can do for this is to be genuine. If we try to live the new life without being genuine, we fake and do not live the new life.

Authenticity is the desire to learn to know God and His will and not defend our own. It is humbleness before Him and His word which is stored in the Bible, and considering ourselves dead to live for Him. When we find that we have broken against His will, authenticity is confessing that He is right, will to do right in the future and faith to believe in the forgiveness based on the work of Christ on the cross.

Humility leads us into authenticity. Humility to let Him do His work in us, practise His creativity and freedom in us, through us and with us. Humility to let Him guide us to find our own styles and mould us into that kind of people He intended us to be. Into sincere, intellectually honest, free, forgiving and kind people.

Therefore, authenticity is the way to sanctification. It is admitting our incompleteness and allowing the Holy Spirit to have room in our lives. When His new creation starts to manifest itself in our lives, internally our genuine identity as children of God strengthens and externally it becomes evident that our we increasingly obey the law of God.

This change in our behaviour is the result of our humility and authenticity. We cannot start by changing our behaviour, which is the end result of the process, but our identity in Christ has to strengthen first and only then be reflected in our actions. Neither can we strengthen that identity ourselves, because that strengthening means that Christ fills us ever more (strongly), and we cannot command Him to do as we say. All we can do is to surrender to God with all our being, give up what He asks us to give up, and trust that He will strengthen that identity in us when and how He sees fit.

Authenticity is giving up our hypocrisy, surrendering our defences and being real. When we personally and continually surrender our hearts, minds, souls and everything else to Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to put Jesus in the centre of our lives, He will strengthen our identity as children of God and we will genuinely know who we are.

Authenticity leads to transparency and openness. Being authentic we have no need to close each other outside our lives, and we can be open about what we plan and do and why. Our love and ideas must get to spread freely. Like open source software, open lives mean sharing what we have for our common good.

Authenticity is freedom. In Christ we are free to serve God and in Christ we have no desire to rule one another. We are called to serve, not to rule. Authenticity is respecting each others’ privacy while handing them a loving hand when needed.

When we are authentic, we are ready to admit and forgive our own shortcomings and those of others. When we realize that we are likely to have ourselves mistaken in many issues, where we believe we are right, our desire to be right transforms from defending our own stand into seeking the truth, even if it means that we have to change our minds.

Authenticity is integrity. Integrity is a word that describes God well. When we live by the Spirit, He expresses His life more in our lives and this word comes to describe us too. Integrity means that we are no longer genuine just to God, but to everyone. The reality of God is expressed in our lives. As are many other of His attributes, like holiness, creativity, love, joy and peace, to name a few.

Authenticity is incredibly challenging. That’s why it often is the last thing we want to do. But authenticity is also the easiest thing to do. Sometimes it is easier to be genuine when you are too tired to be anything else. That’s why it helps to be utterly broken: one who has nothing to lose by being authentic.

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