This article was originally published by Law360 Canada (www.law360.ca), part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.
Each year, Merriam-Webster names a “word of the year,” selected from its dictionary’s most frequent online searches. The announcement represents something of a cultural time capsule, signaling what people are — quite literally — searching for and seeking to define each year.
2023’s word of the year was “authentic”.
This selection seems fitting at a time when AI is dominating our public and legal discourse, and obscuring the line between artificial construct and reality. As we struggle to not only discern but define what is “real,” authenticity is something we are “thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more than ever.”
The word “authentic” is defined by Merriam-Webster to mean what is “not false or imitation,” as well as what is “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character,” and “worthy of acceptance of belief as conforming to or based on fact.” As the publisher explains, the word transcends many contexts, and we are increasingly using it in connection with our very identity, such as when we speak of expressing our true or authentic selves.
So what should we make of this uptick in our search for what is “real” and “worthy of belief”? Are we experiencing, as the dictionary’s editor suggests, a “kind of crisis of authenticity”?
If we were to self-examine, I think we’d find that we are all in some sense searching for authenticity, and not just in a dictionary. A yearning to discover what really matters about ourselves and our universe is intrinsic to the human condition: what is true, what is meaningful, why are we here, what is our purpose?
These questions have been the subject of extensive debate by philosophers, theologians, and scientists for millennia — but no one can deny that we all wrestle with them, and lawyers are no exception. The fact that these questions linger within all of us should perhaps tell us something — and it’s important to intentionally set apart some time and space to work through them.
For many on this journey, faith communities offer invaluable support. For Christians, myself included, Christmas is an especially important time to reflect on the deeper significance — the authentic meaning — of our existence and purpose.
At Christmas, Christians celebrate what the Bible describes as the ultimate manifestation of God’s love — sending Jesus Christ, “his only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.” The Gospels describe Jesus’s teachings and actions as the epitome of what it means to live with purpose and to love authentically. Jesus said that all his teachings about the law could be summarized in two principles: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Ultimately, he demonstrated the greatest expression of this love: laying down his life so others, including each of us, could truly live and be reconciled to God. He was, as the Christmas carol reminds us, “born that we no more may die.”
And that is the beauty of the Christmas story — a story that has endured across world cultures and over thousands of years. It not only details the power of authentic love and its triumph over evil, but it also points us to the prospect of authentic hope. It tells us that there’s a reason for our deeper questions and yearnings: we have been created by a higher power for a higher purpose. And that purpose is sustained by a love that transcends any mistakes we’ve made, any circumstances we feel are impossible to overcome, and any wrongs and darkness we see in the world.
The apostle Paul summarized it this way: “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I don’t purport to have all the answers about the universe, and, like everyone else, I continue to journey through my own search for authenticity. But I have found incredible meaning and purpose in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and in aspiring to follow his example.
Of course, I’d be the first to admit that I fall short and miss the mark. But that’s the marvel of the love described in the Bible. It doesn’t require that we somehow elevate ourselves to a state of perfection before we can reach or attain it. It meets us where we are.
Just like Jesus did, 2,000 years ago.
That’s love in its most authentic form. And that’s something worth celebrating.
Derek Ross is a constitutional lawyer and executive director of Christian Legal Fellowship, Canada’s national association of Christian lawyers and law students.