Jul
26
2012
“Christian” Narcissism
Below is an excerpt from my most recent article in Leadership Journal on our misguided understanding of Christian growth:
The way many of us think about sanctification is, well, not very sanctified. In fact, it’s downright narcissistic. We thinking about how we’re doing, if we’re growing, whether we’re doing it right or not. We spend too much time brooding over our failures and reflecting on our successes. We seem to believe that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian.
Reflecting this common assumption, someone who was frustrated with something I had written said to me not long ago, “Don’t you know that the focus of the New Testament is the personal holiness of the Christian?”
What? Seriously? To keep calm, I replayed Mr. Miyagi in my head, “Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out …”
The truth is, we spend way too much time thinking about ourselves, and we justify this spiritualized navel-gazing by reasoning that this is what God wants us to be doing.
You can read the whole thing here.