Our Narcissistic Culture

Several years ago when personalized license plates were introduced in the state of Illinois (sometimes they are called vanity plates) within the first week there were over 1,000 requests for the license plate that said “#1”. The state official who worked for the DMV whose job it was to assign license plates said this, “I wasn’t about to assign it to someone and disappoint a thousand people.” So what was his solution? He gave it to himself.

I love the story about a little boy and a little girl who were riding on a mechanical horse in the mall. The little boy turned back and said to the little girl, “You know, if one of us would get off there would be more room for me.” That’s a typical kid, isn’t it? But sadly most of us don’t grow out of it. As we get older it’s, “You know, if one of us would go find another job, I’d get the promotion here. If one of us would stop talking, we could talk about me. If one of us would move out of the way, I could be in the spotlight.”

Guess what the most popular genre of photos is today? It’s not scenic nature scenes. It’s not pictures of wildlife or family photos. It’s selfies! 24 billion selfies were uploaded to Google in 2015. And I wonder how many of those photos were tinkered with a bit by those who took them to make the person in the photo look a little slimmer or more muscular.

These are expressions of the world’s largest religion. It’s not Christianity. It’s not Isalm or Hinduism or Atheism. The world’s largest religion is Narcissism, also called Egotism. In the Bible it goes by other names – pride, haughtiness, arrogance, self-loving, self-exalting. Every follower of the religion has their own little shrine at which they worship and in which is a false god called “me, myself and I.” Around the base of the shrine are the common mottos of this generation, “Have it your way. Do yourself a favor. You owe it to yourself. You deserve a break today. Only worry about yourself. Make you happy.”

This is the cultural norm. This the religion of the land in which we live, and we cannot escape it’s influence. Though we can choose to be influenced less by it if we choose to watch, read and listen less to the prophets of egotism in the media and more to the word and people of God. But it’s influence is everywhere and certainly invading the church.

Scripture foretold this. II Timothy 3:1ff, “But realize this, that in the last days [that is in the age in which we are now living, the final age of time, in this last age] difficult times will come. [Why?] 2 For men will be lovers of self [that’s the summary heading. All that follows in the list results from loving self. Because people will be lovers of self, they will be -], lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, [And verse 5 is sobering] 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power.“ That indicates to me that Paul does not just have in mind the “unchurched” people of the world. He’s talking about people who profess to be Christians, people who attend church, sing the songs, pray, wear the T-shirts and have the fish symbol on their cars. They hold to a form of devotion to the Lord. Yet they deny the power that is in true Christianity to save us from our pride and selfishness and sin.

In our study of I Peter we have come to a couple verses that call us to be radically different, to go totally against the grain of our culture.

I Peter 5:5b-6

“and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time“.

One of the first things people notice when they see you is your clothes. Peter says we are to clothe ourselves with humility. This characteristic of humility is to be one of the first things that stands out about us in our interaction with one another. And in our relationship with God we are to be characterized as humble. And Peter says being humble or proud determines the way God deals with us, whether God stands against us and brings us down, or stands for us and exalts us.

Pride and humility are both ways of thinking about yourself in relation to others that comes out in your speech and behavior. Pride is an excessively high estimation of yourself and your importance and it comes out in stubbornness and self-promotion and self-serving. Humility is a lower but more accurate estimation of yourself and your importance that comes out in being teachable and compliant and others-promoting and others-serving.

There’s probably no better explanation and illustration of what Peter is talking about than what we have in…

Philippians 2:3-11

Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing from rivalry or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

“Look out for the interests of others.” Care about their house. Care about their cars. Care about their kids, not just yours. Care about their health, their job, their schedule, their relationships. See if you could help maintain or improve those things for them. Help them get ahead. Promote them. Volunteer for the menial jobs that nobody wants to do so they don’t have to do them.

I think of, in years past, when I would go to a men’s Bible workshop down in Colorado held in a big lodge in the mountains. It’s a two or three day event. Afterward I would stay and help clean up. There were all kinds of jobs that needed to be done (sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, rearranging furniture, packing up all the food and kitchens supplies, things like that). But each year I can remember, the main speaker at the event, the preacher that everybody so admired and came to listen to, would immediately get to work on the worst job of them all. He would go clean bathrooms and showers that over a hundred gross hairy men had been using for three days. Do you know who it strikingly resembles when you see a great well known leader kneeling in front of a dirty toilet?  That looks a lot like our King, girded with a towel, kneeling before the dirty feet of His disciples. “With humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” You take those menial tasks so others don’t have to.

Then Philippians 2:5 gives our example. “Have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God [Unlike us, He had the right to not be lowly minded, to not serve. He existed as the Creator. It’s His rightful place to be served.], did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. [He took the most shameful difficult task so that we would not have to.] 9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

We kind of have an advantage on Jesus in relation to this humility thing and being servants, because for Jesus that was way beneath His dignity. It was stooping way down to a level He did not deserve to be at. But for us it’s not beneath our dignity. God doesn’t call us to stoop to any depth below what we deserve. He simply calls us to stay in our rightful place in mind and word and deed.

Abraham I think gave the best description of our rightful place, of our merit, of our worthiness, of what we are without the grace of God. It’s when he was having that conversation with God about the city of Sodom and asking about how many righteous people it would take for God to spare the city. A little ways into the conversation Abraham said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes.”

“I am but dust and ashes.”

There was a time, according to the first chapters of Genesis, when there were no human beings. But there was God and the heavenly host, His angels, and there was a new beautiful and good creation, full of animals. And it was all just fine without us. God didn’t need us. The angels didn’t need us. Animals probably would have got along fine without us. But then God took some dust from the ground and he formed that dust into a man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being… a living being that should thank God for existence, a living being that should thank God for eyeballs and ears and hands and feet and for allowing him a place in His creation, a living being who should be thankful if God only gave him one tree to eat from, let alone hundreds of varieties of trees, a living being who has no right to complain about anything, a living being who should be very grateful for all that he is and all that he has and all he can do beyond dust, because he was just dust and dust He would be without the grace of God.

Abraham understood that he was but dust. But not only that, Abraham understood that he should be less than dust. He should be a pile of ashes. Because God not only gave this dust a body and life, but also great intelligence and free will, the ability to return His love and honor Him, or not to. God had every right to just incinerate us at our first decision of ingratitude and rebellion. But by His grace we are not a pile of ashes.

To what is a pile of ashes entitled? Does a pile of ashes deserve respect or admiration or praise? Does a pile of ashes deserve to be entertained or served? Does a pile of ashes deserve a house, let alone a three bedroom? Does a pile of ashes deserve three meals a day? Or friends or family?

Do you see how ugly it must look to God when we are stewing mad because we don’t have the money and some of the nice things we’ve seen? Or because we’re not receiving praise or recognition for things we do? Or when we won’t help people of that social class or do certain menial tasks, because we think it’s below our dignity? … We should be grateful to be able to serve the Lord in any way. We are unworthy to untie the thong of His sandals.

Let me give you…

Four additional perspectives we need to have.

First, we are dependent, not self-sufficient.

You may say on your tax-return that only your kids are dependents. But we are all absolutely dependents. As Paul put it, “He gives to all people life and breath and all things”  and “in Him we live and move and have our very being” (Acts 17:25,28). As Moses put it, “man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). All the food and water and air and sunshine and clothing and shelter, and all that you’ve been living on all your life is all stuff that God has spoken into being and into your life. Every cell of your body operates according to His command. We don’t sustain ourselves; we are sustained everyday by God.

Second, we are gifted, not self-made.

Deuteronomy 8-9, Moses told the Israelites, “God is about to lead you into the land of Canaan and drive out the nations in that land who are bigger and stronger than you, and settle you in the land, and then cause the fields to produce abundantly for you and multiply your flocks and herds and you’re going to build nice houses and your silver and gold and all you have will multiply, and then very likely you’re going to become proud. You’re very likely going to think, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land.’ And you’re very likely to think, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ But it is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it has to do with promises God made to your forefathers and it has to do with the wickedness of the nations in the land now. But it’s not because of your righteousness. And it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to make wealth.”

We’re all tempted to think of what we have, if it’s wealth or success or knowledge or talent or skill or strength or whatever, as a testimony to our own greatness, as though we have it because we’re rather righteous or we are just a superior hard working go-getter. But it is all a gift. The place you were born, your genes, the circumstances you’ve been through, the privileges and opportunities you’ve had, and the people in your life that have helped mold you into who you are, it’s all from God. And God doesn’t distribute the gifts necessarily according to our worthiness. Some really despicable characters have been very wealthy, very talented, very good looking, very powerful.

I Corinthians 4:7, Paul asked a couple questions of the Corinthians who were thinking highly of themselves because of abilities and status and things they had. “What do you have that you did not receive?  It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is nothing. “And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”  We are gifted, not self-made. So we have no right to think we are superior or more important than others because of what we have.

Third, we are Spirit empowered, not self-righteous.

That is, if we’re living rather holy righteous lives, it’s not by our own doing. Yes, we have choice in the matter. But without God bringing us the gospel and His Spirit working in us, we are that man described at the end of Romans 7 enslaved to sin who says, “I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate… the good I want to do, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. Wretched man that I am!” But Romans 8:13, in Christ by the Spirit we are putting to death the deeds of the flesh. We’re gaining the upper hand on our sin; we’re not enslaved to it anymore because we’re being helped. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 7 about his self-control in the area of sexuality, how he could live a single life and not have a problem with staying pure. He called it a gift (I Corinthians 7:7). It’s not just because he’s that great. It’s that he’s received a lot of help to live that way.

Fourth, we are still wrong and sinning more than we realize.

Remember a Jewish leader came up to Jesus one time and said, “Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The first thing Jesus said was, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.”

And just before that he told a parable to some people (Luke the writer tells us) who were convinced in themselves they were righteous and they viewed others with contempt. Jesus said to them, ““Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself [I’ve always found that interesting. Jesus says the Pharisee was praying to himself. I think it’s to suggest the line of communication with God had been cut by his attitude. Anyway, this was his prayer]: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’  But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’  I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

I think the Pharisee was telling the truth about himself. It’s true he wasn’t a swindler or unjust or an adulterer. I’m sure he did fast twice a week and pay tithes of all he got. And he was right to thank God for helping him to develop that level of righteousness. People just like that man today attend church every time the doors were open, they’re here for class, they come on Wednesday nights. They come with one of those big study Bibles in a zipper case and it’s full of hand written notes. When it comes time to give they put in a pretty big check. They’re involved in some church activities. They pray before they eat. They’re not practicing obvious sin like adultery or stealing or things like that. What was the problem with the Pharisee? He thought he was about as righteous as can be. He didn’t think he had sin or error. He didn’t think he was still in need of mercy. That’s why Jesus couldn’t get through to those guys, because they were pretty sure they were right about everything. When you think you’re confident, that you’re right in all you believe and do, then you don’t listen very well to anything that challenges what you believe and do. This attitude of pride or humility is such a big deal that Jesus says the humble tax collector went to his house right with God and not the Pharisee who was at church all the time and putting big checks in the plate.

James 3:2, “We all stumble in many ways.”

I John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Psalm 19:12, “Who can discern his errors?” It’s a rhetorical question. No one can. We’re all in error more than we can see.

If you’re doubtful, just read passages like Philippians 2:14, “Do all things without grumbling…” How many of us fulfill that command?

I John 3:16, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Do you love that much? Honestly? Are you sacrificing your life for the brethren?

Or how about I Corinthians 13:4ff, “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecoming; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered…” Is that you in every way all the time?

If we earned our existence from dust and we were self-sufficient and self-made and self-righteous and perfect, then we might have a right to boast, brag, seek recognition, insist on getting our way, and complain or be mad about what we don’t have. But the reality is, we are not a pile of ashes by His grace and we are dependent and gifted and Spirit empowered and still falling short in many ways. It is our place to overflow with thanksgiving and to serve and to help people see how great God is and not ourselves.

– James Williams