Self-Esteem, Narcissism and the Church

I think it was Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, who spoke about the mean between extremes.  What he was talking about was the fact that there are many experiences or descriptions which attach to people or things where one of two extremes can dominate. The place somewhere in the middle is probably the best place to be. A sherry can be a very sweet variety or one that that is very dry.  Most people would opt for something in between. Gardeners know that growing vegetables to the largest size possible does not necessarily produce a crop which is particularly palatable.  There is an optimum medium size where flavour is at its best.  The same principle applies when we want to help people be at the most effective when seeking to influence others.  Loud aggressive shouting at one end and passive feeble whining at the other do not deliver the required results.  Most people would opt for a degree of firmness which is neither abject surrender nor overwhelming coercion and aggression.  Somehow, we attempt to arrive at a middle point that allows us to resolve differences in a drama-free way.   As a further example of this moderation principle, we can imagine the reasoning of those who drink alcohol.  Most of them would probably agree that, just because they enjoy drinking, this is not a reason for becoming drunk every time alcohol is freely available. Moderating our behaviour and our beliefs from potentially extreme positions is an expedient path to take in a world where people try to live together amicably.  The ‘mean’, the moderate position, is likely to be a dominant one in most walks of life.  Nevertheless, we still sometimes meet up with the individual who takes a very hard line in a belief system or a behaviour preference.  Most of the time, in practice, we try to avoid anything that others might describe as an extreme.  The middle way is what is acceptable in the majority of situations.

Being a parent has taught many of us the importance of teaching what moderate behaviour looks like.  For example, we try to teach children the values of sharing, waiting for their turn and generally being considerate to others.  We are also aware of the importance of learning to stick up for oneself in a situation where there is bullying behaviour.   We do not want our children to be manipulated or taken advantage of.  One word that is banded about in this connection is the word self-esteem.  It is a word that implies that the child (or adult) has found the middle way between being crushed by the control of others and the use of excessive verbal or physical force to get one’s own way.  The cultivation of self-esteem is something that continues right the way through life.  What is it exactly?  Most people would agree that to have self-esteem is to be able to apply one’s abilities and gifts in the task of living without crushing others or being dominated by them.  We neither want to be the person who gives way excessively or be seen as the bully who insists that everyone sees the world in one particular way and uses power to achieve this end.

Esteem is one of those somewhat slippery words that is quite hard to define.  It often refers to the respect we feel for a person of integrity and giftedness.  Esteem is something that people give to one another right across the gamut of human relationships.  To have self-esteem is generally a way of describing our internal sense of finding our place within a community and enjoying a realistic sense of belonging.  The one without any self-esteem is the isolated individual, or the pariah who feels adrift within a community.  He/she has no networks of support to help him/her hold on to a secure sense of identity.  

If self-esteem belongs to the one occupying a realistic place on the spectrum of having a balanced place of affirmation within a community, we can sketch out what happens when someone privileged demands that others honour them at every opportunity.  This may be the way that someone who is rich, powerful or entitled believes others should treat them.  They may introduce their approach to others with the words ‘don’t you know who I am?’ In some cases, we are describing someone with strong narcissistic tendencies.  If the individual concerned is the kind that also always insists on the use of titles or some other method of signifying superior status, we may suspect that there may be a problem of esteem deprivation from the past, particularly in childhood.  In short, the adult who lacks self-esteem may be very similar to someone who is seeking to be affirmed and their status acknowledged at every opportunity.  Both are reaching out for something that may not have been provided when they were growing up.

When we enter the world of suspected narcissistic pathology, we find that it is accompanied by what can only be described as addictive elements.  The bullying boss or the controlling fellow worker not only behaves badly towards others in the firm, but we also sense a desperate need in him/her to behave like this.  The ability to make people frightened of you or walk on eggshells around you, seems to be satisfying some pathological need.  Coercion and control are often ways that people operate almost by habit.  This may be a way of self-medicating for a lack of adequate self-esteem which was denied to them in their early years.  Many bullies are unhappy because they never had a place in their neighbourhood or family where they were valued just for being what they are.  Esteem, real esteem, had perhaps been denied them when young, so that they have had to develop new ways of compelling, through acts of aggression, some faux esteem from others.  If they have access to any institutional power, they may use this as a way to keep themselves feeling important.  Because of this, those who are below them in the hierarchy may have to suffer from this bullying/narcissistic behaviour.

It goes without saying that this kind of bullying coercion is not infrequently found in the church.  One might say that because the church operates on a strict hierarchical basis, it will attract candidates for office precisely because self-esteem needs can easily be met by those who become part of this hierarchy.  One of the things that I have found difficult to deal with in my time as a clergyman is the way that the profession of the clergy seems to create, for a significant minority, a mindset that offers its members the same ‘rewards’ as those sought by narcissists.  Among them are status, messianism and grandiosity.  We have all met clergy who seem to bathe in the esteem that comes from having a deferential group around them. This constant need for gratification through their status and importance is also sustained by an unhealthy enjoyment of titles and special clothes.  I have written in the past about this narcissism that is indulged in by some clergy.  Regardless of exactly how the position is used for this kind of gratification, the esteem that clergy enjoy through their status has seldom been a healthy impulse in creating a community that follows the example of Jesus.

The possession of adequate levels of self-esteem is far from being an unworthy aspiration.  We want every human being to know the security that comes from having a realistic knowledge of themselves and a place within a secure community or family.  When individuals stray away from this place of equilibrium in their self-esteem, we find that they may encounter desperation and unhappiness.  Those individuals who are ambitious, wanting to ‘get ahead’ in the levels of esteem they believe they are entitled to, may be working through an esteem deficit and childhood memories of humiliation and shame.  The miasma of power games and competition which we find, even in the church, can sometimes be interpreted as the antics of those who are using church structures in their needy, even addictive, attempt to rise above their own personal past traumas. 

In summary, we find that there are three sources for creating a true lasting self-esteem which we all need for contented living.  We need our own self-esteem to be backed up by our self-knowledge as we described in the previous paragraph.   This is supplemented and affirmed by the acceptance that we receive from others.  They give us esteem insofar as they recognise the true value of what we are now and have been.   Most people are not impressed by anything less than true character showing integrity and truth.   Success in worldly terms is not necessarily a sign that we deserve esteem from our fellows. We have witnessed over the last week a great deal of behaviour which lacks this honesty and integrity.  Senior members of the Church speak in a way that shows that loyalties belong more to a Christian institution than to God in whose name it exists. When this happens, the individual concerned deserves to lose our respect and our esteem.   The final source of our self-esteem is from God himself.  I have not the time here to describe the ways that Christian teaching is sometimes distorted to imply that God does not accept us unconditionally.  If a teaching of human depravity is internalised too far, it can itself cause profound damage to our legitimate attempts to find Christian self-esteem.  That discussion is for another time.  It is sufficient to say that I do not believe that we are required to engage with self-loathing as implied by some classic preaching techniques. The command to love God is balanced by the realisation and recognition that he loves us.  Being loved as we are is a key part of Christian teaching.  It is the foundation of genuine, lasting and true self-esteem.  The power games that we see played out in church and elsewhere by individuals who are addicted to forms of shallow glory and esteem, come to be seen as empty and vain.  When Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in their glory, Jesus was not impressed.  One is tempted to wonder whether our Church, by offering to those in influence superficial esteem alongside power and glory, has led these leaders along a path quite different from the one of humility that Jesus followed.

About Stephen Parsons

Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.

5 thoughts on “Self-Esteem, Narcissism and the Church

  1. I agree that the church should lay more importance in confirming that God loves and forgives us. In this knowledge comes the understanding that we must be worthy of this love and self esteem can grow through this wonderful truth.

    1. In a way, we don’t have to be worthy of love, Margaret. Or, God already sees us as worthy, however you want to put it. Too many people think of themselves as unworthy.

  2. More than 30 years ago I met a priest who was chaplain in a psychiatric hospital. He said: ‘Whatever else you tell people about God, tell them God is love. Psychiatric wards are full of people who think God hates them or is angry with them.’ I’ve tried to remember that.

    Oddly none of the creeds say ‘God is love’. That’s where I would start.

  3. This blog strikes a chord with me because I am a trained drama specialist and in my life I have been director of three different youth theatre groups. I have worked with those with a low self esteem. My technique of teaching is indepth improvisation, no scripts, no preconceived ideas or words to follow, just sheer concentration in building up a character and believing you are that person. This was very far from ‘making it up as you go along’ or ‘ad libbing’.

    I would come to class with a theme which we would discuss and then in groups (which I would organise) the pupils (adolescents), would discuss their own ideas which they would present to the group. Sometimes we were able to give a public presentation with a lighting plot but still no written words such was the concentration.

    These classes were free and open to anyone with the commitment to come each week. Thus I had pupils from a wide variety of backgrounds, privileged and under privileged working alongside each other. As I put them into groups, not planned but in an ad hoc way, they showed respect for each other for the ideas their group members offered. That and being someone different was a great escape for some especially those with a low esteem. Some had behavioural problems as a result of this low esteem but as they became immersed in their drama these disappeared.I have been privileged to see many miracles of such young people gaining in confidence. They knew I cared about them and that the group members respected them for their work.

    That was many years ago but some are kind enough to still keep in touch with me.

    Stephen says, ‘Those individuals who are ambitious, wanting to ‘get ahead’ in the levels of esteem they believe they are entitled to, may be working through an esteem deficit and childhood memories of humiliation and shame’.

    I know exactly what he means and think what a shame they could not have worked with my young people of whom I am inordinately proud.

  4. There were many interesting themes raised by this blog post. On a daily basis we see, acted out on its stage, a microcosm of everyday church life.

    Whenever you contribute on social media like this, it’s impossible to curate yourself out of what you write. To an introvert, this is a horrifying prospect, easier for others than it is for them. To an extrovert, offloading to others is more a routine experience with not much sense of the impact on others. Regardless of where we sit on this slightly over-reductive spectrum, we reveal a lot of who we are online, often unwittingly, but often it’s good and we can learn the true character of some of those we follow. For me it has lead to esteem for a few in particular.

    Freud initiated “free association” the quick eliciting of your first impulse in response to a word, under certain strict(ish) conditions, and thereby a route to the unconscious.

    Of Daniel Craig’s Bond films my favourite is “Skyfall” where he is examined after returning from assumed death. His response to the first associate word of “day” is “wasted” rather than the expected “night” in an attempt to resist the process. But he also reveals his anger and disillusionment and then, as the Analyst gets too close, Bond walks away and refuses to comply. Ultimately they discern unresolved childhood trauma, which in the end ultimately qualifies him rather well for Service.

    Few of us will submit to “free association” and there are other routes to the unconscious, such as analysing our dreams, but engaging on the internet like here is a fair approximation to public analysis like Bond’s.

    I’ve been in group psychotherapy and for this to work effectively, the group helps each other reflect and come to some terms with each other’s issues. The blog isn’t group therapy, but it can help us learn and grow, if we are open to learn, and prepared to listen and contribute.

    It’s a very valuable in vivo culture for church discernment and change. Some will over-share and swamp, some will always lurk and be silent. Moderation helps with the former, and the group, if functioning effectively, draws out the reticent for their valuable withheld insights.

    We face our own narcissistic tendencies even as we write about it in others. We face our own imperfections as we call out those of our leaders. We test our own humanity as we co-relate with others to critique the Church. I find it a compelling test and one to be embraced.

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