Narcissism is defined as an excessive admiration of self. In everyday parlance, however, it seems the definition has broadened to an excessive concern of self.Bopping about the Internet the other day, I stumbled across a blog that featured a brief essay by "Guest Writer - Katie Corbett, VA." This essay is a revealing, as well as revolting, glimpse of someone caught in the throes of the sickness of religious narcissism.
Katie describes how her church had become involved in an event called "50 Days of Unbroken Prayer." Many Christian fundamentalist and evangelical churches do this kind of thing -- conduct prayer marathons in the hopes that maybe there is a God somewhere who, if they pray long enough and with enough fervor, will hear their supplications and make their lives meaningful.
Actually, that never happens. They never hear from God. Rather, it is in the act of praying that they find "meaning," for as they reflect on their lives and draw various conclusions, they deduce that these conclusions are, in fact, messages from God.
In one sense, it's an effective system, as people can justify pretty much whatever they want to believe or do. They are just obeying God's commands.
Katie's prayer time was at 4:00 AM...which she admits "is crazy." At least she's rational enough to realize it's rather weird to go to an empty hotel room at four o'clock in the morning to spend an hour in prayer.
Did Katie pray for peace on Earth, for goodwill to be established among all people, for truth and justice to prevail in our country, for war to be abolished, for the suffering souls in Burma...? No, in fact, she didn't.
Katie prayed that God would tell her how to deal with the minutiae of her life. And after 54 minutes pouring out her soul in that hotel room, God gave her a "clear" message: He told her that she could not "be consistent with temporal things but allow spiritual things to fall to the wayside."
Isn't that amazing? Katie says she heard God clearly telling her to get her spiritual act together.
Please be warned; what follows is a bit perverse!
Katie writes that "Humans are a desperate people who need to spend consistent time with the true lover of our souls. I am a woman," she said, "in desperate need of my holy God."
So Katie, in her prayer time, went through the ACTS system: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. That's when God showed her what he thought she needed to do: be more consistent with Him.
But it's so hard, Katie mused: "Why do I allow the giver of true and awesome love to be pushed aside? Am I really that busy? I doubt the Love of my soul is filling up my day planner with everything except him. At this moment, I feel him asking me to come to him...all the time. This great big God, who is so beautiful and mighty, wants to spent time with little, insignificant me. He is so consistent with me. Don't I owe him the same?"
(Welcome to Ditzyland! But what would Dr. Freud say?)
How to be consistent with the "Love" of her soul? How to be consistent with her "great big God"? Those are the questions that concern Katie, "a woman in desperate need of [her] holy God. Thus, caught up in religious narcissism, she turns inward and concentrates on minutiae.
If she can run three miles a day, she ought to be able "to spend more than a few minutes with [her] Father ..." the "Lover" of her soul.
If she spends "time dressing and putting on make up" ... [or] if she spends "a good 30 minutes just staring at the mirror every morning focusing on [her] physical beauty," and then allows "the beauty of God's redemption to go unnoticed" ... she feels guilty and sad.
So Katie decides she must "rearrange some stuff and get consistent." Great things will happen if she does that. Rhetorically, she asks, "What amazing things will God bring forth in the hours to come? I can't even begin to imagine, but I can't wait to find out."
As utterly repulsive as this narcissistic religious panting for Daddy God is, it is fairly representative of the kind of religion promoted among the Christian fundamentalists: a religion utterly absorbed with individual "salvation," with one's feelings, with the notion that there is a Supreme Deity who created the entire Universe but who is nevertheless deeply and ultimately concerned, not with the suffering in Darfur, not with little children starving, not with the victims of cyclones in the Far East, but with whether one spends as much time thinking about or praying to Him/Her as one does putting on makeup.
There is not a whit of concern for anything or anyone beyond one's insignificant and mundane daily existence.
It is a truly sick business.
3 comments:
Could it be that Mary, an impressionable, practicing Jewish teen became pregnant through her belief or prayers to have a child? Without DNA evidence, we will never know. Many millions of people accept that she was made pregnant by God somehow. They also believe that it never happened before or after. We have no evidence and no proof but many believe it to be true. There is not way to prove otherwise so it is left to faith. Does that mean that those that do believe are addicted to that belief? If so, how do others manage to avoid becoming addicted?
Bob Poris
While your point is well-taken and clear, it would be an error to suppose thisexample of a "faithful' person can be extrapolated to all religious believers...there are a great many who do pray (and work) for the benefit of others, to relieve suffering, etc. I am agnostic, but I can still recognize the social (or "prosocial") and/or altruistic role that religion (or religious faith) can play in society, in the world. Also, the apparent "sexual" connotation (or the double meaning)of "submission" to god (i.e., in the act of devotional pray) may in fact be the primary (pro-social) purpose of prayer/religious devotion -- to sublimate (transform) the libido (I believe Jung said as much)...If we were ceaselessly indulging our libidinous/sexual urges -- unconcerned for others or the consequences of so much (implied: loveless) sex (or purposeless appetite) -- how "hellish" would this would be? But likewise, we can repress Eros too much (in our self-denial), and invert or pervert this instinct into its opposite: the killing of others in the name of god (which some have likened to an ecstatic experience).
Thank you, Michael, for your thoughtful comment. I had to go back and read my essay as it was written almost 7 years ago!
I would respond by saying that this kind of religious narcissism is more prevalent among the Christian fundamentalists and certain "evangelical" groups. You would not find much of this in the larger, more liberal denominations.
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