On Authenticity

I have fairly regular conversations with people who want nothing to do with the Jesus or Christianity due to the sins—real or imagined—of the church. Patriarchy, racism, sexism, capitalism, exclusivism, colonialism, sycophantism, homophobia… These and many more are vigorously laid at the doorstep of the church. How could I associate myself with such a religion? And the less obvious but implicit corollary: How can you?

I’ve devoted a lot of words over the years to these kinds of questions. These responses tend to run down two related tracks. First, these critiques tend to ignore the enormous good that Christianity has done in and for the world (hospitals, orphanages, universities, the rise of science, literacy, our most basic assumptions of human rights and dignity, etc.), to say nothing of the profound spiritual hope that it has offered its adherents over the years. No, the church has not always been at its best (or even close to its best). But I think we can scarcely imagine how terrible things would be without its profoundly humanizing influence in our world.

And second, moral critiques of the church tend to rely quite deeply on moral assumptions that would be inconceivable without Christianity and the church. This is rarely acknowledged and often barely understood. The charge that the church has not always behaved appropriately towards vulnerable communities, for example, relies upon the moral conviction that the vulnerable ought to be afforded dignity and protection. A conviction that comes from Christianity and nowhere else. But this is all well-travelled terrain.

Well, it’s one thing for a pastor to respond to these kinds of questions. I suppose you’d assume the position would sort of require it. What about a rock star who has become inconveniently religious for some of his fans? As it happens, Nick Cave was called to justify his affection for Christianity in his most recent edition of the Red Hand Files. Jemma, from Australia, demanded answers. How do you reconcile your faith with the church’s awful history?

Cave’s response was interesting. He began by speaking of artists that he admired who had said and done things over the years that he wasn’t entirely on board with:

They have often not travelled in the direction I would have hoped or wished for, instead following their own confounding paths (damn them!) to their own truths. In the course of this I have sometimes been discomforted by things they have done, disagreed with things they have said, or not liked a particular record they have made. Yet there is something about them that keeps me captivated, and forever alert to what they might do next. More than anything, this has to do with their authenticity. I know that on a fundamental level they are on their own path and they are not in the business of shaping their lives, artistic or otherwise, in order to please or make others feel better. They are fully and acutely authentic, regardless of my feelings, or the feelings of anyone else and I find this deeply reassuring in a world that so often feels devoid of genuineness.

Cave goes on:

When I write a Red Hand File, and in any other area of my work, I try to remain true to myself as a means of respect and to not bend to the needs of others. This is my way of putting before you my best and most authentic self.

Our lives are complicated and we all think and do things that are often unfathomable to one another, but we do so because we live our experiences and find our truths in different places. To my considerable surprise, I have found some of my truths in that wholly fallible, often disappointing, deeply weird, and thoroughly human institution of the Church. At times, this is as bewildering to me as it may be to you.

I’ve expressed a lot of admiration for Nick Cave over the last few years on this blog. I resonate with a great deal of his writing even if, as I’ve said before, I’m not a huge fan of his music. I like some of what Cave says here. I appreciate his insistence, for example, that we should not adjust our opinions merely to satisfy the market’s demands. And his recognition that human beings are complex creatures who say and do and believe things for all kinds of reasons is surely a welcome one.

But overall, I found Cave’s response unsatisfying. It is a response that is fundamentally grounded in personal authenticity. This language is sprinkled throughout. They are on their own path… they found their own truths… this has to do with their authenticity… they are fully and acutely authentic… I try to remain true to myself… This is my way of putting before you my best and most authentic self… we live our experiences and find our truths in different places. 

I know Nick Cave has a tenuous (at best) connection to orthodox Christianity. He admits as much. He is drawn to the aesthetics of the faith, the pathos of Christ’s suffering, the freaky, countercultural supernaturalism, etc. It did not surprise me to hear Cave ground his response to the Red Hand Files question in the subjective. But are we really only left with a war of competing authenticities? Is Christianity just one mode (among many) of being true to oneself? Does Jesus simply make himself available as one more option in the ongoing project of self-discovery/creation, one more potentially serviceable guidepost on the path to our own bespoke truths?

If so, it doesn’t take long to tie ourselves in knots. How, for example, might one respond to a claim that this or that expression of patriarchy, sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. was simply an expression of personal authenticity? That it was just this or that person’s “personal journey,” a weird and unpredictable place in which they found “their truth?” After all, Cave ends his response by saying, essentially, “Yeah, it’s weird and kinda conflicted and who-woulda-thunk-it, but I seem to have ended up in the church. This is where my personal journey of authenticity has landed me.” But what about when our personal journeys land us in odious and offensive places? What do we say then?

Well, then we’re back to the vexing problem of needing more than “personal truths” and “authenticity” to ground our moral protests. Which takes us, whether we like it or not, out of the realm of our own private truths and in to the messy realm of public truth and having to make actual arguments that go beyond subjective experiences and preferences. And, from a Christian perspective, it takes us into the uncomfortable space where we must acknowledge that the self-at-the-center is kind of a theological problem, perhaps even the theological problem. We are and have always been terrible little gods who aren’t even remotely up to the challenge. At its best, the church reminds us of this and sets us on better paths.