A Picture of Authenticity

Why revealing our true selves is both necessary and terrifying

by Sam O'Neal

I feel a little bit like Jay Leno writing this blog post, but I think it still has a worthwhile lesson (aside from being hilarious).

So here's what happened. I am a raving fan of the Chicago Bears, and a couple months ago I was reading an article about a charity event that was being run by one of the Bears' defensive players, Charles "Peanut" Tillman. Peanut is a good guy, and every year he holds a celebrity flag football game to raise money for chronically ill children.

This year the event is being sponsored by Meijer, which is great. It's good to see pillars of the community come together like that—especially for such a great cause.

But then I came across an article from an internet news outlet describing the event. The article started out okay—detailing who Charles Tillman was and how his event has run in the past, then talking about Meijer as a sponsor. But I soon noticed that the author had forgot to delete his manuscript notes from the final copy. For example, when he mentioned the Charles Tillman Cornerstone Foundation, there was a note next to it that said "IS THIS THE RIGHT TITLE?"

Things still wouldn't have been so bad if the author hadn't included the following note after talking about why Tillman started the foundation: "QUOTE FROM A MEIJER PERSON WHY THIS IS SO IMPORTANT......OR I CAN MAKE IT UP."

Ouch. (If you want to see the actual web page, click on the image to the right.)

And that's a pretty good object lesson about why authenticity is necessary for small groups, but also extremely frightening. Nothing transformational will happen in your group unless people take off their masks—unless they reveal their manuscript notes, so to speak. But doing so takes tremendous courage, because we all know deep down inside that we are hypocrites and frauds in one area of life or another.