Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “authentic’ in many ways…

Some of the definitions of this word include:

worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact b: conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features c: made or done the same way as an original

not false or imitation : real , actual

This word has been on my mind for many years now as it relates to Christianity and Spiritual matters because the word is being used quite frequently in reference to either the worship experience or to the actual Christian walk with the implication of receiving an ‘enlightenment’ of the way we did church for the past nineteen hundred years was wrong therefore we are restoring the way church was operated within the first century of it’s formation from the book of Acts.

However, for some reason or another, all of this ‘enlightenment’ we believe that we divinely received are somehow disowned, discredited, and denied ten to fifteen years later as goofiness, foolishness, and ‘we missed the boat’ when a ‘new enlightenment’ (really an old teaching with new buzzwords) appears on the scene (that we will discard ten years from now…… see the pattern? get the picture?).

What really made me think about authenticity in reference to enlightenment was my discovery of these two well written articles by a man named Douglas Weaver entitled Authentic Experience and Authentic Motivation. when referred by an e-mail to his article about the Cindy Jacobs praying to the golden bull on Wall Street (I actually look at other articles within a blog when referred to another different article, you actually read some very interesting stuff).

As Mr. Weaver discussed in his Authentic Experience article how:

…I am truly no longer astonished at these ridiculous activities. However, I have become increasingly saddened by the engagement of the people of God and how desperate people are for an experience or encounter with God – so much so they will travel for hours to “sit under the anointing” or “be in the presence of God.” So much so they will swallow hook, line and sinker the emotional manipulation that is so often portrayed as the moving of God’s Spirit. So much so they will allow themselves to be tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine, searching for what God can and will do for them rather than what they can do for others.

There are many who claim to be desperate for God but they are truly desperate for a feeling, an experience. Having become emotionally bankrupt due to selfishness, bitterness and unforgiveness, they clammer for anything that will stir their soul. Rather than confessing their sin so that they can be healed, they seek an encounter with God to mask conviction. Rather than being reconciled with their brother they want to offer a dance, tongue or prophesy. Rather than become transparent and interdependent within a community of believers they seek the “supernatural.”

I thought about those words because I saw a pattern here. Where Mr. Weaver relates this experience versus authenticity, I want to delve into this a little deeper and reveal something that is propagated everytime one of these new ‘moves, encounters, and experiences’ is taught.

It is taught that this new ‘move, encounter, and experience’ is actually the enlightened pathway to authenticity and the way to restoration of the ‘early church in the book of Acts’ and restoration of the Leave It To Beaver Christian America we once had.

Look at all those pathetic excuses for prophecies that show up on the Elijah List. Look at the Lakeland Revival. Look at all these mega-conferences held every summer. Look at all the gross misinterpretations of 2 Chronicales 7:14. Look at all those crazy prayers on the golden bull and crazy warfare prayers along I-35 rallies Cindy Jacobs promotes. Faith has become formulatic and not foundational. Faith has become conditional based on a ‘If we do …..; then God will do ….”. The posts, e-mails, and articles on many Christian sites in reference to the upcoming election proves this point…..

In fact, we advertise these enlightenment sessions along the lines of ‘get something to soothe me’ and bring back a lost America and a polluted church instead of ‘worship the Lord to exalt He (Christ) to go out and fulfill the Great Commission into all the world’.

We say we are restoring the lost authentic Church but we seem to be going farther away from the Scriptures hoping that everyone will vote for God’s Official Party to decrease government in the lives of people only to increase government to fulfill the role of evangelist (via legislation) that the church should be doing all along per the Scriptures.

The only way to authenticity is to go back to the Scriptures and once again place out faith in God and not a government. If we rely on another mega-conference. If we rely on another ‘mega-prayer-rally’ on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade preceded by another forty day fast to feel some tingles thinking change is near and a new enlightenment is on the horizon, and if we rely on restoring shofar blowing and the Jewish feasts to ‘be able to open the door for God to ‘come back’ (he never left to begin with), then all we do is spin ourselves in a circle and in a cyclic pattern never realizing that we are in the holding pattern.

If we really want to be a part of an authentic church with authentic community, we have to to quit lying to ourselves and first become authentic with ourselves and realize that we need to confess our own individual sins by taking up the cross and crucifying the flesh and not make up corporate and identificational sins of our past forefathers to ‘repent from.

I can’t repent for them. They had around 60-80 years to confess their own sins and did not do so for some reason. All I can do is repent for my own shortcomings, failures, and sins and walk away forgiven and go fulfill a Great Commission.

And I have to authentically do this in a ’supernaturally natural’ way no matter what happens to America and who gets elected on November 4, 2008.