NOTE: This item is reposted from a 2013 original text on the WRF Blog. It is republished here due to its surprising currency. 

Last Sunday’s New York Times published, “The Gospel According to Me,” an Opinionator blog critiquing America’s spiritual quest for “the authentic self” as ultimately selfish and one that dead-ends at cynicism.

Philosophy professor Simon Crichtley and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster describe the culture’s slow replacement of religious belief with an individual “liturgy of inwardness” that doesn’t subscribe to a God or any religion which makes moral demands of us. Work or our “vocation” has become the place to fully express our authentic selves.

But because of America’s accumulated wealth, work for the average person is disconnected from the harsh external realities of survival and sustenance, and while this affluence is a gift, it has become a psychological burden. It’s also become a moral one.

Success at work usually means successful bank accounts, and greed or the acquisition of things is, “disguised under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion.” But fail at work, get fired, or never find your all-fulfilling calling, and your authentic self becomes unmoored. You have no life, and you have no money from which to purchase all the things you want from all the right local and global markets.

The not-so-secret “secret” is, of course, we all fail, whether it’s at work or in some other way, and we all fall prey to judgment, be it a judgment that comes from our inner self or those around us. The question is whose judgment ultimately frees us?

As a counselor in an affluent church in the United States and one who attends a predominantly Latin immigrant church in Texas, I wrestle with the issues Crichtley and Webster raise. Many clients come to me with anxiety and depression that are often connected to a sense of personal failure or buried cyncisim. At the church where I attend, the American dream of a better life is a good one, but materialism and its transformative greed is a very real nightmare few of us, including myself, know how to wake from. But from my office and beyond, my greater concern is a growing legalism in the West that progressively seems to want nothing to do with Christian morals but may be turning into the perceived  - and sometimes real - judgmental beast it is trying to flee.

With morality no longer collectively agreed upon, life becomes an increasingly difficult place to define and live out grace. The NYT op-ed writers focused on the new legalism of success at work, but the West has a host of new cultural rules rearing their heads, and when any "rule" starts to rule apart from grace, it becomes a tyranny. Think of all the “shoulds” with all the choices in a culture of creation and consumption - whether it's having to farm or purchase organic food, maintain a perfect weight, constant happiness, creating a life so you are always able to choose what you want to do and then do it (work, vacation, consumption or otherwise), perfectly educating children, making stories – but which stories, making films. As one harrowing example of the new legalism, read some of the speeches and critiques from this year’s Cannes festival and see how even the top film isn’t good enough: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21578634-abdellatif-kechiches-film-la-vie-dad-le-carries-top-prize-subtle-story).

If the American quest for “the authentic self” means living a life where our individual “self” is the ultimate and only judge of what is good or best, unfortunately this "self" is rarely merciful, rarely sustains a kindness toward others that is forgiving or knows how to be self-critical in a moral sphere. When there’s no longer a moral sphere to inspect or scrutinize ourselves, criticism settles into the material sphere as it has today: looks, weight, money, fair-trade purchases, etc. What may be good or a good choice becomes almost a tyranny of the enlightened purchaser or whatever is newly deemed as the enlightened way.

So, what does love for our neighbor look like when their way or purchases, or vocation or body falls short? It’s grace - the gift of Christ's forgiveness and reconciliation with God and one another – that provides the love not only for surviving but thriving in this life and the next. The need of the hour, in my opinion, is not just a rejection of “the authentic self” and a return to morality but a life rooted in Christ’s grace. 


Shannon Geiger, M.Div., Westminster, is a counselor at Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas, TX. Before seminary, Shannon was a newspaper reporter and magazine editor. She and her husband, Josh, currently serve at a bilingual church in Dallas, TX, where Josh is the pastor.  Shannon may be contacted at  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.