Quotes about Authenticity

The church will not have power to act or believe until it recovers its tradition of faith and permits that tradition to be the primal way out of enculturation. This is not a cry for traditionalism but rather a judgment that the church has no business more pressing than the reappropriation of its memory in its full power and authenticity.

Worship that does not lead to neighborly compassion and justice cannot be faithful worship of YHWH. The offer is a phony Sabbath!

But this is real prayer, down and dirty. It is not nice church prayer that refuses to ask anything because we mostly do not believe that prayers are heard or answered.

The key insight is that honest talk transforms and emancipates when it is received in faithful seriousness.

Humanness depends on being faithfully heard. And being faithfully heard depends on risky speech of self-disclosure uttered in freedom before a faithful listener.

I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.

There is nothing in this world so hard to get at as truth, and there is nothing in this world but truth that I care for.

I know firsthand that once you've tasted the reality of God—not hype or excitement, but the great filling of His glory through your veins—your spiritual taste buds are simply ruined for anything counterfeit.

Even though I have not mastered it, I now have a better sense of what makes us want others to think well of us, and how we can prevent that desire from ruling in our hearts. False Narrative: My Value Is Determined by Your Assessment

Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving.

Christians must pioneer new ways to bind ourselves to Scripture, to our traditions, and to each other—not for mere survival, but so that the church can be the authentic light of Christ to a world lost in darkness.

Only authentic Christianity brings together both truth and grace.