An album that was released just days ago has already become the best-selling record of 2021. Adele’s 30, the first new album from the English singer-songwriter in 6 years, has shot to the top of the charts. It’s certainly not an easy listen, however. 30 has been described as her ‘Divorce album’, with every song saturated with the emotion of her divorce from husband Simon Konecki.
In fact, in her own words, the album was an attempt to explain the divorce to her young son when he gets older. Here’s how she put it:
‘I just felt like I wanted to explain to him, through this record, when he’s in his twenties or thirties, who I am, and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness’.
Personally, I’m not sure what’s more shocking – the quote itself or that we’re now at a point in history where such statements are more likely to be greeted by applause than criticism.
Sacrificing even those nearest and dearest to us for our own personal happiness is now applauded. ‘I changed who I was to put you both first,’ she sings, ‘but now I give up’. According to the magazine editor the BBC interviewed about it, ‘that’s a really positive message’.
We used to at least pretend to be altruistic – now we can act however we like, no matter how much it hurts others, as long as we are being ‘authentic’. From ‘I’m just saying what I feel’ to ‘I just had to walk away from my wife and children’ – we’re just being true to ourselves. We’re just expressing ourselves authentically.
Obviously, I believe in being honest and genuine, but often ‘authenticity’ is less about being honest and more a justification for doing what we want despite the needs of others around us. It is the great whitewash agent of the 21st century, used to excuse much.
Authenticity seems to be premised in the crazy idea that we are somehow innately good, and in being authentic we are somehow peeling back the layers to expose that innate goodness.
But the last thing society wants from me is for me to be authentic! I have many natural impulses and instincts which need to be restrained and rooted out. Self-control needs to be exercised so that life is liveable for those around me!
We are flawed individuals, flawed from the day we were born. We have attitudes and appetites don’t need expressed, but restrained. Oscar Wilde understood this, and in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray the portrait of Gray becomes uglier and uglier as Gray himself gives free reign to his expressiveness and his appetites.
In addition, to be authentic leaves us completely wrapped up in ourselves – doing what I want regardless of the impact it has on others. I have to be true to me – the rest of you can live with the consequences. Such authenticity is fundamentally selfish.
What is the alternative to authenticity? Is it hypocrisy? Pretending to be something we aren’t? Certainly not. The alternatives are self-control and other-centredness. These forgotten traits are still greatly admired when we see them. Long after the buzz of the latest celebrity being ‘authentic’ has been forgotten about, the people around us who are gentle in their speech, genuine in their concern, and servant-hearted in their action continue to make an impression on us.
These qualities grow out of self-awareness and love for others. Life isn’t about me; it’s about me in connection with others. Love and community call us to consider our actions in light of the impact on those around us. And so we recognise that we are flawed and instead of giving vent to our flaws and thus reinforcing them, we restrain them.
But we need more than to restrain them. We all need transformation. We need rescued from ourselves. That’s why when Jesus came to earth he spoke of the need for the new birth – and why he told one of the most respected religious people of his day that far from his religious works saving him, he needed to be ‘born again’.
We are actually at our most authentic when we admit who we really are and, instead of wearing it as a badge, seek God’s help to make us into who we were designed to be.
Don’t be ‘authentic’; seek the only one who was truly authentic – Jesus Christ – and he will make you more authentically you than you could ever have imagined.
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 2nd December 2021.
(Largely based on this article by Mark Loughridge)