Narcissistic people rarely have deep friendships and usually don’t really desire them. They have fans but not friends. They have the admiration of others but not intimacy. They want to surround themselves with those who will approve and affirm them and assure them that they are okay but not with true friends who will lovingly wound them with the truth. They don’t typically give in relationships; they tend to take. Narcissists tend to use others to build up themselves but do not invest or give in relationships.
Glory Hunger
Life is a war for glory. Even those of us who have rested in Jesus to bring an end to our battle for glory still fight skirmishes in which we feel our reputations are at risk. We live on a battlefield where we strive to attain glory and put it on display. We measure ourselves against others to see how we are stacking up. Are we advancing in our careers fast enough? Is our romantic life lagging behind? Are our finances lagging behind? Are our gifted and talented children in all the right activities? Are we spiritual standouts? We become slaves to our image and the glory that comes from being extraordinary. With every victory the glory counter goes up, and with every failure and folly the glory counter is reset, and we strive to recapture that lost glory.
The gospel has the power to liberate us from that because Jesus won ultimate glory for us. In him we are given the unchanging status of justified and adopted children of God. We are fully known and fully loved. God’s image is being restored in us, and we will one day “shine like the sun” (Matt. 13:43). What people say about us, what we say about ourselves, and what people do to us is trumped by what God has said about us and done for us in the gospel. But the skirmishes rage on, and we still fight for the glory that comes from men.
The Problem of Narcissism
What we want more than anything is to have a sense of importance, significance, and worth, and it is possible that we treat Jesus and his gospel as a means to secure that idol for us. Jesus’s death and resurrection bestow on us glory and honor from the Father— absolutely. It is possible, though, that what we really want is not Jesus and God the Father but a sense of glory and honor that come to us from them in the gospel. Our hearts are so inclined to self that we can use the gospel of Jesus as an attempt to make ourselves indispensable to God.
The gospel says something wonderful about us, but it primarily says something wonderful about God. The cross is not primarily a shout-out to our worth but a shout-out to God’s worth and righteousness, that he might be exalted as the “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). The driving motivation of God’s saving activity is the praise of his glory, not ours (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14). A legitimate glory hunger rooted in our need for God’s love and acceptance can easily become warped and so remove God from the picture altogether and become a twisted and monstrous focus on self that uses the gospel to satisfy our obsession with our own significance and glory. Our legitimate glory hunger can easily get out of control and turn to narcissism.
Narcissus was a character in Greek mythology, a hunter well known for his beauty and vanity. One day his archrival led him to a pool where he stooped to drink. As he looked into the pool, he became transfixed by his reflection. Immobilized by his reflection but not knowing it was merely an image, he could not leave the reflection of his beauty, and he died beside the pool.
Narcissism lies at the core of our wrestling with glory hunger. While narcissism is a clinical issue, there is a functional narcissism that runs rampant in our culture. Narcissism is an excessive concern with and overinflated view of oneself, an inordinate self-love and preoccupation with one’s own image and reputation. It is an egocentrism rooted in an exaggerated self-esteem that in reality is self-absorption.
In our culture, real emotional health begins with an unabashed love affair with oneself. The message you are being sold is that you are great, and you matter more than anyone else.
The Crushing Consequences of Narcissism
There is a temptation to say, “So what if our culture is narcissistic!” But there are some tragic and destructive consequences to functional narcissism. Proverbs warns us, “It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory” (Prov. 25:27). In other words, just as you can get sick eating too much honey, you can get sick on an appetite for personal glory. Eugene Peterson, in his book Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms That Summon You from Self to Community, writes, “Centering life in the insatiable demands of the ego is the sure path to doom.”1 We don’t have to read too far in the biblical narrative to see this. The great temptation with which Satan deceived Adam and Eve was to become their own gods, putting themselves at the center—what some have called the “de-godding” of God and the deification of self. When they bit on that temptation, sin and death entered this world, and the cosmos become chaos.
- Eugene Peterson,Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms That Summon You from Self to Community(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 12.
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