Give trust and grace to others. It’s the holidays

Dec. 24, Anthony Elia, director of Bridwell Library and associate dean for Special Collections and Academic Publishing at SMU Dallas, for a commentary about how we should be more forgiving and understanding during the holidays. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading: Give trust and grace to others. It’s the holidays: https://tinyurl.com/mr3k33hk

Last Christmas, I attended a Sunday service at one of our local big congregation churches. During the sermon, the lively preacher spoke in that folksy cadence and animating spirit to deliver the weekly message. In the pew in front of me sat a distinguished-looking man in a storm-gray suit, with a shock of white hair. After listening to the preacher for a bit, the man bent toward his wife, rolled his eyes, and mouthed the word “faker!”

By Anthony J. Elia

I often think of this, because that single whisper summed up our present mistrusting and suspicious world. Television pundits, D.C. hacks and even preachers are often the objects of these criticisms. And the political discourses of the last year, especially during election season, yielded little of anything surprising or revelatory, as much as the realization that in our daily conversations, our own convictions are influenced by our inner impressions of what is “real or fake.”

Nowadays, those with power, authority or wealth — whether politicians, preachers or plutocrats — first come under this critical lens. This scrutiny extends to friends and family, almost as if it’s nature’s way of keeping everyone in check. It’s natural for us to judge righteousness or jump to conclusions about what we imagine other people are thinking.

People claim their “authentic self” in contrast to putting on a public face. Yet, we each have different circumstances within which we live, act and perform — as leaders, doctors, lawyers, office workers, colleagues, religious leaders, relatives and many others. Even throughout the course of our days, we behave differently based on our hunger, fear, tiredness and confidence. The problem with authenticity, which may also be the problem of society, is that it is equated quite rigidly with truth-telling and behavior, and not on any recognition that we live in fluid situations of emotion, commerce and interpersonal experience. In a world where fewer people believe in truth and where behavior is under constant examination, authenticity may no longer be able to exist merely as one agreed upon idea

Many languages and cultures have dealt with this paradox, and some of these ideas have come into English to contend with the nuances of truth, realness and authenticity. Words like persona originally meant “to sound into” and “a mask” that you spoke through; or facade, which comes from the word “face.” Some philosophers like the 19th-century theologian Søren Kierkegaard have suggested that authenticity itself means “to become what one is,” which effectively means it’s a process of change. Terms like these express the messiness of human nature, of human behavior, and of human interaction and communication. We act or speak in ways that are almost always determined by circumstance. How we present ourselves can get us jobs, maintain social standing, and inspire others — or just the opposite — even if such presentation is not who we are at home or with our families. Does that make us inauthentic, less capable to lead? Certainly not.

Our humanness demands that we are flawed and inconsistent, while also seeking to show ourselves in the best light. At the same time society demands strict notions of unfailing obeisance to the public, holistic consistency, and a confessional sincerity. These are impossible tasks, because real life is messy and no amount of obsessive authenticity bashing will change this or anyone. Authenticity, then, becomes a litmus test for both the individual and society, an idea that reflects the particular moment. How we allow our understanding of authenticity to play out, whether to accept people different from ourselves or to pillory them because we think they are inauthentic, will continue to affect us as a global community.

The Christmas season presents and sometimes promotes artificiality in the extreme — from immersive holiday experiences such as medieval German Christmas villages selling marzipan loaves to hotel conference centers re-creating New England winterscapes with constructed hills of manmade snow for $25-a-pop toboggan rides; or even some of those churches with extravagant Advent Lessons and Carols (which I love!) replete with compressors that pump out airy puffs of tiny soap bubbles into the congregation, simulating snow. We live in a world of artificiality, inconsistency and inauthenticity, but we choose selectively between what makes us feel good and what does not.

The authenticity of fake snow and plastic conifers is defined by the feelings they evoke and the sense of community they cultivate. Our social tensions are situated in intentionality, what we imagine others are really thinking and what they are publicly portraying. The Christmas imaginaries carry little overt political motives, while individuals generally do. And with that we are quick to judge one another. Maybe in this season of lights that illuminate the dark winter, as we enjoy the splendor and recreation of holiday spaces and artificial snow, all of this might just allow us to reconsider authenticity and its messiness. Perhaps we can find comfort and joy in extending trust and grace to others a little more often and in discovering some spirit of love throughout all of our communities.

Anthony J. Elia is director of Bridwell Library and associate dean for Special Collections and Academic Publishing at Southern Methodist University. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.