Everybody's a Narcissist Now.
Check the Mirror First.

Most people do not know the word comes from a story. In the old Greek tale, Narcissus was a beautiful young man who came to a still pool of water and saw his own reflection. He had never seen himself before. He leaned over the water and fell in love with what he saw — and he could not leave. He stayed at that pool, reaching for something that could never reach back, until he wasted away and died there.

That is where our word comes from. A man who could not stop looking at himself, and it killed him.

But there is a second character in that story, and almost nobody talks about her. Her name was Echo. Echo had been cursed so that she could not speak her own words. She could only repeat back what other people said to her. She loved Narcissus, and she followed him, and all she could ever do was give him back his own voice. He had no use for her. And Scripture is not where this story comes from, so I will not preach it as doctrine — but I want you to notice something the ancients understood. The person who cannot stop looking at himself is usually standing next to somebody who has lost her own voice.

That is not a myth. I have sat across from that woman. I have sat across from that man. Hold onto Echo. We are coming back to her.

Let me name what I have watched, gently.

We use it to stop listening. Once I have decided you are a narcissist, I no longer have to consider anything you say. Every point you make is evidence of the diagnosis. That is a very comfortable place to stand, and it requires nothing of me.

We use it to win. It is the strongest word available in an argument. It does not merely say you were wrong — it says something is wrong with you at the level of your soul.

We use it to avoid our part. If you are a narcissist, then whatever happened between us is entirely yours. I do not have to look at my share. The label does my repenting for me.

And here is the quiet danger. The more freely we use that word about other people, the less likely we are ever to examine ourselves. It is very hard to see your own reflection while you are pointing at somebody else's.

There is one man in Scripture who does exactly what we do, and Jesus tells the story on purpose.

Look at what that man is doing. He is in the temple. He is praying. He is fasting twice a week and tithing on everything. By every visible measure he is the most devout person in the building. And his entire prayer is about himself, measured against somebody else.

He does not ask God for anything. He does not confess anything. He informs God of his standing and points at a man across the room.

Now understand what I am about to say. That man would have been the first to call the tax collector a narcissist. He had a whole vocabulary for other people's sin. He simply had no mirror.

And Jesus says the other man — the one who would not even lift his eyes, who beat his chest and said God, be merciful to me, a sinner — that is the one who went home right with God.

The difference between those two men was not behavior. It was which direction they were looking.

Now I am going to ask you some questions, and I am not asking whether you have a disorder. I have already told you I am not qualified to ask that and neither are you. I am asking a different question. Where does self sit in me?

• When was the last time I apologized without adding but?
• When somebody tells me I hurt them, is my first instinct to understand — or to explain why they should not feel that way?
• Can I sit in a room and let somebody else be the interesting one?
• When something good happens to a person I know, is my first feeling joy, or a quick private measurement against my own life?
• Do I confess sins, or do I confess incidents — carefully edited so I still come out reasonable?
• When I tell the story of a conflict, am I ever the one who was wrong?
• Am I generous when nobody will ever find out?

I will tell you honestly, some of those questions cost me something when I sat with them. That is what a mirror is for.

I do not want to leave anybody without hope, including the person who just recognized themselves in the hard part of all this.

Nebuchadnezzar stood on his roof and looked out over everything he had built and said, Is not this the great Babylon I have built by my own mighty power and for the glory of my own majesty? He is not a subtle man. That is the loudest self-exaltation in the Old Testament, and God humbled him completely. He lost his mind and lived like an animal in a field.

But read the end of the chapter. After this time had passed, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven. My sanity returned.

He looked up. That is the whole cure, and it is available to anyone. He stopped looking at the reflection in the pool and lifted his eyes, and the moment he did, his mind came back to him and his kingdom was restored — and he wrote a testimony that is still in your Bible.

So if the mirror showed you something today, do not despair over it. Nobody has ever been too far gone. But you will not fix it by looking harder at yourself. You fix it by looking up.