The Rise of Religious Narcissism |
by Bruce W. Davidson |
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We live in a very neo-Romantic age, in which
feelings are considered more significant than facts. This is why a man
can claim to be a woman just because he feels like one and be taken
seriously, even held up as a hero, despite the obvious biological
evidence to the contrary. The Achilles heel of this mindset is that
feelings often lie, especially self-centered ones. Unfortunately, this
mentality has also spilled over into the religious world, where it has
given rise to self-absorbed spirituality that can best be called
religious narcissism. In
Altar to an Unknown Love, Beasley remarks that this trend
“has been a longstanding development of subjective religion here in
America: a kind of modernized emotion-based-existentialism which
subjugates everything beneath the thoughts, feelings, intentions, and
imaginations of the worshipper.” The foundation for this was probably
laid by the pietistic brand of Christianity that became increasingly
popular in the nineteenth century in the U.S., the U.K., and Europe. While theological declarations of faith predominate
over personal emotions and experiences in older hymns,
nineteenth-century hymns often tend to be moralistic, sentimental, and
subjective, with the pronoun “I” appearing in many lines. This
religiosity received new impetus with the advent of psychotherapism and
the New Age movement. Though they denigrated traditional Judeo-Christian
monotheism, humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham
Maslow recommended Eastern mysticism as a means of self-realization.
Since it is a religious outlook making few absolute moral demands, the
New Age approach appealed to a free-wheeling, morally liberated youth
culture, as Melanie Phillips observes. However, many of the Eastern
societies where such religions flourish have been conspicuous more for
their conformity and groupism than for individuality and
self-actualization. Subsequently, this therapeutic New Age outlook has
given rise to a self-centered, highly emotional brand of religion, even
among Christians. Contemporary religious writers such as John Eldredge
and Sarah Young are cases in point, since both come from psychological
counseling backgrounds. Unsurprisingly, the Jesus who mystically speaks
to them sometimes sounds a lot more like a pop psychologist or a New Age
guru than the Jesus of the New Testament. Many others today also seem discontent with simply
reading their Bibles; they have to
be Bibles. Consulting their inner spiritual impressions and
psychic wounds, modern believers frequently look to God mainly for
therapeutic benefits and pleasurable, drug-free feelings, along with
greater self-esteem. Riding the pop psychological wave, church leaders
such as Joel Osteen and Rick Warren have become purveyors of
self-esteem, self-help, and self-actualization by means of religion.
Even before their popularity, pastor and best-selling author Robert
Schuller had recommended abolishing the traditional concept of sin,
replacing it with self-esteem and “possibility thinking.” Showing their
obvious self-esteem, many modern religious writers and speakers make
unabashed, liberal use of the self-centered pronoun “I.” Full-blown
religious narcissism took the stage when Victoria Osteen brazenly
declared that we practice a life of faith not for God, but for
ourselves. Following the lead of such people, scores of
religious leaders today preach therapeutic, motivational messages rather
than expounding the text of any scripture. Subjective, postmodern
religiosity has allowed skepticism into the evangelical movement, which
was originally committed to biblical authority as the objective standard
of faith. Insightful critics of this phenomenon have come
from both secular and religious backgrounds. For example, in regard to a
pop psychologist telling people that “God wants you to have it all,”
Justman moans that this approach results in the “stripping of
transcendence and sublimity from religion.” Long ago, the American theologian Jonathan Edwards
discoursed at length on the problem of religious narcissism, which he
considered the essence of hypocrisy. Many others have also been
convinced that the Bible prophetically warns about this type of religion
in passages such as 2 Timothy 3:1-5 (NASB): “... difficult times will
come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful,
arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy... lovers
of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of
godliness[.]” The Apostle Paul is speaking here of the religious world,
not the secular world. Self-centered religion goes hand-in-hand with
shallow sentimentality, irrational mysticism, and moral laxity,
especially toward sins like arrogance and selfishness. Gleaning any helpful moral guidance from
self-centered religion poses a real problem. Of course, religious
narcissists may choose to assume a moral pose, especially when it
enhances their social standing in line with the current groupthink, a
recent example being the viral video “I’m Christian, But I’m Not….” On
top of that, it is hard to derive any incentive to worship such a deity,
since the god of the religious narcissist is inevitably a small one, who
exists only to gratify the believer. Therefore, the best remedy for
religious narcissism is allegiance to a transcendent deity with a
written, rational revelation not so easily susceptible to misuse and
manipulation. Faith in such an ultimate reality leads people away from
the delusion that subjective feelings are what really define them.
Rather than plunging down the rabbit hole of introspection for direction
and fulfillment, they should be looking outward and upward.
American
Thinker,
January 24, 2016.
Bruce W.
Davidson is a professor at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan,
and a board member of the Jonathan Edwards Center, Japan. |
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