The quest for authen­tic­ity is all about jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, all about jus­tice, all about being right. Those who set off on quests to “find them­selves” can only do so under two pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios. There are those who have already found them­selves, and they found them­selves when they were found. And when they were found, it was like look­ing into a mir­ror for the first time and laugh­ing at how silly they looked. These peo­ple who have been found (and sub­se­quently found them­selves) set off on the quest for authen­tic­ity like a child dig­ging through a toy box look­ing for his favorite action fig­ure, his favorite hat, his favorite stick. They go look­ing for them­selves like a game of hide-and-seek. They are like Chesterton’s char­ac­ter Innocent Smith who trav­elled the world in search of his own house, chas­ing his own hat, and woo­ing his own wife mul­ti­ple times under dif­fer­ent names just for the fun of it.

But the only other kind of quest for authen­tic­ity is the one for those who are still lost. They are look­ing for them­selves because they really have not found them­selves, because they have not been found. These lost souls have no favorite hats because they didn’t know they had one. They have no favorite sticks because they were never handed one. They are orphans, home­less, father­less, and they have noth­ing in this world. There is no dif­fer­ence for them between being really lost in a real wood and being lost in the whirling uni­verse of a back­yard with an imag­i­na­tion and all after­noon. But in sal­va­tion, God comes as the Father to the father­less, the Defender of orphans in their dis­tress, the Finder of the lost. He rec­on­ciles all lost souls through the death of His Son, mak­ing them right and offer­ing them an inher­i­tance with His Son through the Spirit. Jesus has been seated at the right hand of the Father and has inher­ited the world. All things belong to Him: all the ani­mals, all plants, all weather, all food, all hob­bies, all the sci­ences, all tech­nolo­gies, all of the nations, and all of the mys­ter­ies of the uni­verse that we have not even dis­cov­ered yet. And if they belong to Jesus, they belong to His peo­ple. The uni­verse is our sand­box, our toy box, our backyard.

And this brings us full cir­cle to the quest for authen­tic­ity and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Justification is the doc­trine of play. It means all is right with you, and God, and the world. It means you live your life in the back­yard of the uni­verse and you have all after­noon. In Christ all things are yours, all things are free, all things are given. But there are some who come into the church who have not yet shaken their craven, orphan ways. They grasp at sticks and toys and stuff them in their pock­ets, look­ing around sus­pi­ciously at every­one around them. Or maybe they put on grand shows, dis­play­ing their sticks and action fig­ures, their free range chick­ens and their raw organic milk, wink­ing and nod­ding, hop­ing that every­one will believe them now (not real­iz­ing that every­one else has been given sticks and action fig­ures too, and Jesus owns all the chick­ens and milk). And usu­ally you can tell the lost souls by the way they worry all the time about what other peo­ple think, what other peo­ple might be mis­un­der­stand­ing. But when the lost sons are found and adopted and clothed and given their inher­i­tance it brings peace, a rad­i­cal, over­flow­ing peace like a lazy Sunday after­noon, like a stream run­ning along mer­rily in the for­est, like deep, belly aching laugh­ter with tears rolling down your cheeks. Those who have been found by their God are always found, always being found, like an epic game of hide and seek, laugh­ing with their God, laugh­ing with their Father.

But those who are lost are really wor­ried, wor­ried about the food they are eat­ing, wor­ried about their hob­bies, wor­ried about where they buy their clothes. But don’t worry: We have a Father, and He has made us right.