“For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:37-39)

The year was 1966. John Lennon, the lead singer for the wildly popular rock group The Beatles was sitting in his London home next to a gorilla suit, a full-size crucifix and a fully equipped suit of armor as he was being interviewed by Maureen Cleave of the London Evening Standard. She started her interview with a question about religion, and he responded in his cheeky English way by saying, 

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”

Most Londoners let his comment filter through public discourse with barely a notice, but Americans of that day were up in arms. Parents, pastors and even the Klu Klux Klan were demanding for a complete cancellation of all concerts. “How dare he spew such vile hatred!” Lennon was the poster boy for teen rebellion and his comments became the new battle cry for an emerging culture of narcissism. 

Narcissism is defined as, “extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one’s own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.” 

Narcissism in most cases can be quite destructive for relationships and families.  But when it is displayed in pop culture like it was in John Lennon’s case, people are quick to accept it and assign it to the outflow of “artistic brilliance” and the person’s inner genius...they are just being their amazing selves. Lennon may have been a rare case to exhibit such public brashness, but now being 50 years removed, narcissism has become standard fare for most of our celebrities.

Just this past weekend the NBA had their all-star game weekend. It featured the best of the best in basketball, including both the three-point competition and slam dunk contest. Sure it was meant to entertain, and it did just that, but this year it was a bit too much. The players, pimped-out in their best gangster wear, acted like a group of self absorbed teens who were more impressed with each other’s greatnessthan being mature professionals who were grateful just to represent. And to top it off, it was Kobe Bryant’s last all-star game so the NBA felt obligated to send him off well. One sportswriter notes, “I wonder whether the league needed to produce more than one tribute video for the occasion…These videos were over the top, insofar as most people do not receive elaborate tributes when retiring from their professions.” So for the next two months, basketball fans will be asked to pay weekly homage to a man out of his prime limping around the court while raking in millions.

Politics is no better. “The Donald” and Hilary truly believe they can do no wrong. Even when they are caught in misbehavior and possible corruption, American voters are being asked to ignore “the man behind the curtain” and continue serving as mindless neophytes who never question and only fawn at their super-star candidate. It is clear to everyone Donald and Hilary are only in it for themselves, not to be representatives of the people for the people. It is believed by many pundits that narcissism is a necessary character quality if you are ever hoping to become the President. If you don’t think I am right, just watch Barak. He is a narcissistic virtuoso.

But before we are quick to point a finger at the rich and famous, we need to look a little closer to home. I believe narcissism is fast becoming a standard part of our American fabric. Two clues have awakened me to the truth of this. The first comes once again from reading the writings of that nasty demon in The Screwtape Letters written by C.S. Lewis. He is writing letters to his demon nephew about how to really get people off track from following God. He explains how it is very simple, all you need to do is get a gullible person to really believe that ‘My time is my own.’ He says:

“Let a person have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours…the money that he tithes is his own personal birthright…and ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell and we must keep them doing so”

And here is one more very insightful nugget,

“Man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift…the word ‘Mine’ in the fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything.” 

This truth is convicting and humbling. Our time, money, health, talents, intelligence, and property has never really been ours – – they are all God’s provisions of grace. Grace is never deserved; only bestowed. And since birth, we have grabbed and clutched at things believing its all mine, it’s mine to do as I please, as I want, as I decide, throw caution to the wind and let it be! (Another great Beatle song) James 4:12-15 says, “Come now, you who say,’Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” 

This ownership and possessiveness of time God calls evil. If that isn’t narcissism, I don’t know what it is?

The second thing that has really awakened me to this “Natural Narcissism” is the way we talk about people we love or admire, especially when they die. As a pastor, I have witnessed many funerals and memorial services, and in the last five or six years, people seem to talk about their loved ones who have passed in terms, titles and abilities that should only be reserved for God. People are painted with no flaws, no errors, they are seen as almost godlike in their qualities as they lived among us, mere mortals. I have even heard quite a few people making statements about how their loved one “is now an angel in heaven watching over us, ever-present and able to meet our every need.”

I understand how grieving and mourning cause people to tend toward sentimental cliche’ and overstatement, but for most people, God has faded in the shadows and is nothing more than a minor actor in the life of a person. He has become the world’s stagehand whose job is to stay hidden while he changes the backdrop and stage scenery for the brilliant actors on the stage to “strut and perform” for there own personal glory. And we think we are doing God a tremendous favor to even acknowledge him as playing a small part in our lives at all.

Chinese water torture is meant to kill with a slow agonizing death, drip by drip by drip. That is what I call my daughter’s young teen television shows that she watches on Netflix. Over the years I have watched enough of these mindless exercises of folly to send me to the loony bin: “Suite Life with Zac and Cody,” “Zoe 101,” “iCarly,” “Life with Boys,” and the most recent one she watches is “Good Luck Charlie”.  One day as my daughter was eating lunch watching “Good Luck Charlie” I was noticing that the plot line was so stupid I wanted to pull my hair out. Apparently the oldest boy in the family had to baby-sit his sister for a whole day. He is 17 and his sister was one year old. He decided to invite over his neighbor who also was 17 and had him bring over his one year old little brother. He came up with the brilliant idea of having a crawling competition between the two one years old. So they decorated the basement, got a sound system, designed a high tech crawling track, outfitted the babies in track wear, and were awarded gold and silver medals for the baby who won the crawling battle. And the show was trying to make the viewer believe that both of the 17-year-olds were dead serious about this.

I couldn’t take it because not only was it silly, but it was overtly patronizing to the viewer. Who in their right mind would ever take a crawling contest seriously? Who in their right mind would award medals to babies? Who in their right mind would spend hundreds of dollars to decorate a basement just to watch babies crawl? Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it?

I wonder, does God feel the same way about us and our sports, award shows, trivia competitions, all-star games, and singing competitions? From God’s perspective, what is the difference between a baby crawling and a man shooting a ball through an orange hoop? I am not doubting the entertainment value and fun it provides for us down here, but why do we allow these things to give us so much personal significance and worth? Why do we think we are so great because we can do the things God designed for us to do in the first place? 1 Corinthians 4:6-7 asks it like this,

“Do not take pride in one man over against another. For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”

Narcissism’s biggest downfall is that after a while we begin to lose the importance of God because we are so obsessed with staring at ourselves.