The terms “Christian” and “narcissism” should be mutually exclusive, but unfortunatelty they are not for reasons that will shortly become evident. The word “narcissism” has a very interesting origin. Narcissus was a figure in Greek mythology. He was exceptional in beauty and prowess (and he knew he was.) There was also a cursed nymph named Echo. Echo was cursed by Hera because Echo would try to distract Hera from finding Here’s usband Zeus carrying on with another woman. Echo’s curse was that all she could ever say was to repeat the last line of the person speaking to her. Echo was attracted to Narcissus, but he spurned her and spitefully sent her off, since his love for himself made him incapable of loving another. Aphrodite took up poor Echo’s cause and decided to punish Narcissus. She found him lying by a stream gazing at his reflection in the water. He was completely transfixed by his image. Aphrodite turned him into a flower (the narcissus) as punishment for his ego and treatment of Echo. This is why, the Greeks believed, the narcissus can generally be found near streams and lakes, allowing Narcissus to behold himself in wonder forevermore. 

Even today in the U.S., we have hundreds of thousands, perhaps several millions of people like Narcissus, and in extreme cases, their self-preoccupation can lead to an actual personality disorder. Unfortunately, our future rewards “perfection” and shames or punishes “imperfection, so in some sense, we’re perpetuating the problem.

What is narcissism?

The Mayo Clinic defines Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD: DSM-5 301.81 [F60.81]) as “a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.” But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism. The Clinic lists the following traits at the top of its list of signs and symptoms:

Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance; have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration; exaggerate achievements and talents; be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate, and monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior.”

Christians and narcissism (Troubled relationships)

The most important characteristics of narcissism and particularly NPD according to Dr. Helen Okoye” writing for Theravive are “grandiosity, seeking excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy.”  Grandiosity refers to a non-merited sense of superiority over others who are thought to be inferior to the person with NPD.  It encompasses a sense of uniqueness in the person who may see themselves as “chosen” in some way.  The grandiosity and admiration from others mask a deep felt sense of low self-worth or inadequacy within the NPD person,  As you might imagine, this self-preoccupation in narcissism at the expense of others usually causes relationship problems because as far as the person with NPD in concerned, ordinary people do not understand him (NPD, incidentally, is found more often in males than females.) Within the general population, less than 1% of males have NPD, but the incidence is much higher among patients who are institutionalized.  People with NPD often have associated mental health issues such as bipolar disorder, depression and substance abuse problems.

Holes in their genes?

Specific genes have been associated with NPD and it often runs in families, though how it develops is no\t currently understood. There are also environmental factors thought to be involved in the development of this illness and these factors involve impaired emotional attachments to parental figures in the home, possibly leading the child to feel rejected or inferior in some way. Other facts may include overly indulgent parents, being overly praised by others for their accomplishments, emotional abuse, observing and appropriating ways to manipulate others to name a few factors. When people with narcissism serve as pastors, elders, or other leaders in a Church, you have the potential for problems and schisms built around personalities and cliques. This is because pastors, elders, youth and worship leaders and such are perceived by the congregants as authority figures (indeed, representatives of God Almighty within that group.) The fact that these people also often possess confidential medical and psychological histories on their flock (much as priests might gather through confession) makes it more difficult to deal with these problems when they happen (and they do happen.) Even Biblical injunctions such as asking for forgiveness can be corrupted by narcissism.

People with narcissism love to have their photos taken, but they are very picky about what photos they allow others to see. So they are enthusiastic selfie fanatics. Let’s look at selfies briefly.

Smile–you are about to go viral

According to a BBC article two years, 259 people worldwide accidentally killed themselves taking selfies between 2011 and 2017.  According to the article, “Drowning, transport accidents and falling were found to be the most common cause of death” were the most common causes of death.  People today—and especially teens and college age students—seem particularly prone to take their self-portrait doing something dangerous, such as driving 120 miles per hours at night (without lights on) or standing atop some famous rock formation which they’ve defaced for the sake of their photos.  In recent times, nineteen people have been killed at the Yellowstone National Park hot springs, most of them trying to take photos of themselves either just before a scheduled eruption or staring down into the boiling hot caldron as if they were the Oracle of Delphi inhaling the fumes of the rotting python.  Still others have approached wild beasts to have their photo taken, and they’ve been horribly clawed by a bear with cubs or eviscerated by a bison with a calf. Why do people do things like this?  Writing in “Psychoanalyszing the Selfie-Nation: What’s the Difference Between Narcissism and Self Expression” author Anna Agoncillo notes: ‘Narcissists have extreme preoccupation with their own physical appearance, mental abilities, success, and image as perceived by others They often find gratification (i.e., satisfaction, pleasure) from vanity or admiration of their own physical appearance. The current venue to achieve this gratification is by taking countless selfies everyday and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.”  Clearly these are not people who just caught a six hundred pound blue marlin while sports fishing.  Nor are they celebrating their first “hole-in-one” after fifteen years playing golf or the birth of their new son or daughter.  So, the problem is partly a question of motive, but also obsession and preoccupation with self. Imagine if such a person were President of the U.S.? Hmmm.

The time of my life

Christian teenagers and young people with tendencies toward narcissism can get caught up in this too, because they (and we) often become immune to exactly how antithetical our culture is to God and His plan. I’ve heard of a youth group at one church who watched, as I recall, “Dirty Dancing” during a sleepover. That was more than thirty years ago. Who knows what kids in Christian youth programs are watching today? Movie and premium channels as well as network television carry shows steeped in occult themes such as ghosts, vampires and werewolves, or the “undead”. Many Christian youth listen to rap music filled with profanity and they come under peer pressure to drink, vape, experiment with drugs and premarital sex. So, it’s little surprise that they fill up their social media with selfies like their friends do. You see some boys flashing gang signs with a beer can in their free hand (or grabbing for their crotch.) Girls love to expose cleavage as soon as they have any, and while in provocative poses, and you can’t tell which boys and girls among them are the believers and which are not. 

Think of the world this way: You’re in a packed out bar and grill with a live, loud, band, and there is a huge crowd. Some people are dropping dazzle and others are in a corner, completely wasted. There’s a voice in the far corner of the room with an urgent message for you, and you’re standing next to an EVH 5150 amp. You’re trying to ignore the pounding bass guitar, while twenty people are singing the lyrics at the same time and another two dozen couples are in conversations or ordering meals or drinks while you try to hear that voice, that pleading voice. Meanwhile, the guy to your right is trying to pick a fight with you and the guy on your left is trying to pick you up. And you are trying desparately, staining to hear that voice. “That” voice is God’s voice, and the devil is intent on creating as much noize and confusion as possible to distract and derail you. It is possible to hear that voice, though, if you ignore the mayhem and madness around you. It may not be easy to do so, but it is well worth the effort!

The world is a dangerous place. Kids are killed for their sneaks and others for a pack of smokes. Children are snatched from their parents, never to be seen again. In hs first epistle (1:9), the Apostle John writes: “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” But the devil’s days are numbered.

Christians and narcissism

Augustine of Hippo coined a term “Incurvatus in se” which means “curved inward on oneself.”  It is the self-notion that a person has when they believe themselves to be entirely self-sufficient and capable of great things based entirely on their own merits.  Their own life and life experiences become the norm.  Everything “clicks” in their life because they are on top of things. Thomas Merton writes in his book New Seeds of Contemplation:  “All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists in my own egotistic desires, is the fundamental reality of life around with everything else in the universe is ordered.  Thus, I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge, feeling loved, in order to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real.  And I wind experiences around myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world.”

C.S. Lewis agrees as he explains in hs poem “As the Ruin Falls“:

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

In sin did our mothers conceive us

In this fragment of a poem that was published posthumously, Lewis admits to possessing selfish, manipulative qualities common to all Christians but which many Christians are not even aware of. He understood narcissism. He understood himself to be entirely corrupt. Was it T.S. Elliot who said the last temptation was doing good things for bad motives? Unless we can cry out: ““Woe to me!…I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” as Isaiah did (6;5), we cannot truly understand our predicament. Martin Luther once said that an unregenerate person cannot even eat without sinning because he does it ungratefully. No less than the Apostle Paul said “In me dwells no good thing” (Romans 7:8.). When I write “In sin did our mothers conceive us,” I’m not referring to sex outside of marriage or some “forbidden liaison,” but rather the stain of sin that every newborn since the Fall has had or future infant will have. This is what some churches call “original sin” and while other churches causally dismiss it as justification for infant baptism, it never-the-less witnesses to the fact that “innocent babies” die from factors outside of their control, the same as adults do. They fight over toys, they are mean to their little sisters, the lie, etc. Because this is their fallen nature. We can teach them interpersonal relationship skills, but we cannot address their fallen nature–only Christ can do that (and He has on the Cross for those who will one day believe.)

Second Adam

But the problem is much more than that.  Narcissism is misplaced love, where we love ourselves more than we love God.  And narcissism is also a preoccupation with what happens within our own life, rather than an outward expression of what God has and is doing in our life for the sake of making a positive difference in the lives of those around us. A real stream of consciousness. The temptation to narcissism was part of the original sin, because Genesis 3:4, 5 quotes the serpent (read Satan) as saying: “You will not certainly die,for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (emphasis added.) Eve (and Adam) wanted to be exalted, to become like gods, themselves. Contrast this with the humility of God the Son as Paul describes in Philippians 2:5-8: “Indeed, let this attitude be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Though he was by nature God, he did not consider equality with God as a prize to be displayed, but he emptied himself by taking the nature^[ of a servant. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

The need for humility is paramount. Let’s revisit Philippians again (2:5-11): “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” The word “emptied” is ἐκένωσεν (ekenōsen.) When the grammar (participles, verb tenses, etc.) of verse seven is closely examined, the verse seems to say that Jesus, in the role of a slave or bondservant, put aside (emptied) his Deity on the occasion of His crucifixion. The divine nature might have otherwise refused to be subjected to such injustice or humiliation, but Jesus became humble and suffered humiliation (knowing He did not have to make the decision He did) for our sakes. He did it freely out of love, much as, much more than Sydney Carton did for Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette in Dicken’s work A Tale of Two Cities.

If you’re a Christian, you need to prepare yourself for this denunciation from the world and unbelievers. Don’t act provocatively to invite it. If you let your light shine, and treat everyone as you would like to be treated, trouble can find you soon enough. And rather than launch a spirited defense root and branch, I personally believe that we may be called to emulate Jesus on occasions like I’ve described, “emptying” ourselves of our prerogatives, society status, legal recourses, etc if there is a greater good at stake.

Header photo credit: delcarmat (Shutterstock.)