I’ll turn 50 next month, and I’m giving myself a gift. Actually, I’ve been working on this gift since early May, and I’m hoping that by the time I actually cross the Great 50 Divide, I’ll have a good sense of what the gift looks and acts like.

The gift is authenticity.

At this point in my life, I feel confident enough about my place in the universe that I don’t feel the need to impress, to protect, to defend, to spout the party line. No longer do I want to play games, trying to seem better at this or that than I really am, whether it’s an issue of occupational competence or spiritual vitality or intellectual knowledge. It’s not like I’ve been a big fake, a phony, a political games-player. Over the years I’ve been pretty open and honest. And yet, streaks of embedded inauthenticity run through my daily life, which I’ve discovered (with dismay) during the past few months as I’ve been trying to excise falsity from my deeply-ingrained habits and tendencies.

I want to grow in being honest, transparent, vulnerable, genuine, open. I don’t want to tell people what they want to hear, or what they expect to hear from me as a denominational suit. I don’t want to only voice sentiments that are safe, whether at work or church or in general relationships. I don’t want to play the part of an all-knowing, all-spiritual church elder, when my knowledge and spirituality fall way below allness. I want to stop playing Christian one-upmanship games, end the reign of pretense in so many nooks and crannies of my Christian character, and slay the remaining dragons of insecurity which give rise to self-justification, defensiveness, and excuses. I want to have no inhibitions about saying, “Wow, I really goofed that one up,” or “I was wrong, and you were right.”

Authenticity doesn’t require that I turn into a blunt jerk who dumps critical crap on people and says things like, “You know, you’ve got really ugly ears. Hey, I’m just trying to be honest.” There is still a matter of appropriateness and discretion. But you get the idea. Writing regularly in this blog is actually very good practice in being authentic.

So that’s my birthday present to myself. I’m working on it every day, trying to flesh out what it means, though I keep encountering bastions where genuineness remains locked out. But that’s where I’m headed. And so far, I’ve found it quite liberating.

I’m an advocate for taking care of the poor, underprivileged, and dispossessed in our midst. Or am I?

These people are definitely on my conscience. Have been since 1981, when I heard former UPI reporter Wes Pippert speak at a press convention. Pippert, in addition to being an ace reporter at the top of his profession, was also an Old Testament scholar. A brilliant guy whom I first heard speak when I was a student at Huntington College. At this convention, he explained how, throughout the Old Testament, God’s judgment or blessing on a nation was usually tied to how well it took care of its poor people.

Pippert’s words planted a seed in me which has grown, slowly, ever since. Until then (I was two years out of college), despite having grown up in wonderful evangelical churches, the poor were not on my radar. Which makes me wonder why the heck we United Brethren have this huge blindspot regarding something central to God’s heart. Whatever the case, during the past 25 years the poor have been on my radar with ever-increasing pings, and Pippert’s words have been repeatedly reinforced. It’s now something I believe strongly.

But has it made any difference in my life, beyond self-righteous, idealistic sniveling about the need to care for the poor? Mark Driscoll writes in Radical Reformission, “Ideals become values only if they are lived out.” Well, it would be fashionably humble to beat up on myself, but the truth is, my behavior and attitude have come a long way. Yes, I live in a nice house and blow a lot of discretionary income. And yet, there are things I do and don’t do that demonstrate a change from ten years ago.

Through my current church, I hang out with people on the lower end of the economic scale. They are my friends, and I care about them in a hands-on way. I’ve gone beyond just writing checks to someone else who works around poor people. What started when Pippert plucked my conscience has blossomed into something that really matters. But not nearly as much as I’d like it to matter. And as much as it will matter, I hope, next year, and the year after that. I’m still more of a talker than a doer. But I’m glad to be more than an idealist, too.

Many fundamental attitudinal changes take years. Wes Pippert’s message wasn’t a Damascus Road experience for me, where I suddenly turned 180 degrees. Rather, it started me on a really long journey. And now, after 25 years, I find myself way way down that road. And I should take some pleasure in that. I can look at other areas in which change has come not through a crisis experience, but through a steady progression. Like my thinking regarding how Christians should view the environment, gays, politics, spending habits, war and peace, and much more. I’m also learning to be patient with people who are also on a journey of attitude-change, and not expect any amount of harping on my part to transport them to the place it took me 20 years to reach.