Being authentic is all we have…

Acts 17:24–25
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Many years ago, when I was a youth pastor for a Pentecostal church in the South Island, I lived a fairly typical church life—married, running youth groups, deeply involved. There was a particular woman in the community who held quite a bit of influence. She carried herself as the ideal Christian: strong on spiritual gifts, heavy on piety, well-known and respected. She appeared to be the model of godliness.

One day, I visited her home, and she gave me a stern lecture about how “offensive” I was to God for watching science fiction movies. According to her, such films were “not biblical, not sound,” and a dangerous slide toward the demonic—certainly unbecoming for a youth pastor. I smiled, thinking she must be joking. I loved Star Trek, Star Wars—those adventures had shaped me. But she wasn’t joking. My smile offended her. When I left, she and her children had judged me quite severely, questioning my spiritual state and commitment to Christianity.

A few months later, one of her sons approached me. He hadn’t liked what his mother had said, even though he initially joined in the judgement. He said, “I’ll show you something. This is what we like watching.” He slid open a coffee table drawer. Inside were several DVDs—including a couple of science fiction titles.

“Hey, those are good sci-fi,” I said. “I like those.”

He grinned. “Yeah… Mum likes them too.”

A knowing laugh. A shared awareness. And suddenly the whole façade was exposed.

From that moment, something lodged deep within me: how easy it is to present oneself as virtuous while living entirely differently in private. That encounter has stayed with me, and I’ve seen its pattern repeat in countless lives.

And it raises a profound question:

In a world obsessed with performance, pretence, and social approval, is authentic living the most meaningful expression of faith, respect, and love toward God and others?

God’s Self-Sufficiency: What Can We Possibly Add to Him?

It’s surprising how often, when we examine our own spirituality, we find narratives playing in our heads—subtle orders telling us to act a certain way so we don’t “offend” God. There’s this underlying belief that if we get something wrong, we might diminish his holiness or honour.

But Scripture is clear:
We cannot add anything to God.

Any pretence we create—any performance aimed at making God think better of us—ultimately forms an idol. It is not God we honour, but our imagined version of him.

The Christian understanding of God is never one where we climb upward to impress him. Rather, God steps toward us in grace because we are incapable of stepping toward him. He invades our reality not to gain something, but to give—because giving is in his nature.

Psalm 50:10 reminds us: “Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.”
Everything we offer him is already his. Even the act of sacrifice is not for God’s benefit or enrichment. All things are from him, through him, and for him (Colossians 1:16).

It is humbling: we cannot make God happy, complete, or feel more like God.
We cannot earn divine “likes.”

This reveals a deep human struggle: we crave approval. We want to be seen as more spiritual, more righteous, more significant than we truly are. But before God, we stand as we really are—normal, fractured humans trying to make sense of a world that overwhelms us and a God whose fullness is beyond comprehension.

And here lies the most freeing truth:
We don’t need God’s “like.” He already loves us. He has already given us Christ.

What God Actually Wants: Our Authentic Selves

When we grasp who God is and understand his grace, we realise the only thing we can offer him is the honest truth of who we are. God already has everything required to be God; but we are not complete unless we are in him.

So the only meaningful offering we can bring is ourselves—our real selves.

We don’t worship to make God happy; we worship because it is right.
We don’t do good to gain approval; we do good because it is good.
We don’t pretend to be better than we are; God’s love should be enough.

Authenticity before God becomes a two-sided reality:
We are authentically less than we ought to be, and authentically becoming more than we are.

We act—not to buy God’s favour—but because authenticity is all we have before him. We are naked before him. Therefore, we must learn to represent ourselves truthfully, both to God and to ourselves.

Here’s a concluding thought from Bonhoeffer from ‘Life Together’:

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die… Not only to our badness, but to our goodness. We must die to the illusion that we can give God anything he does not already possess, and we must die to the temptation to be anything other than who we really are before him.”