Breaking Our Narcissistic Bubble

I was born at the center of my universe and, despite God's frequent attempts to break through my narcissistic bubble, I remain locked in a Mark-centered world. And I'm beginning to think that this basic narcissism is what plagues most of humanity. We never grow out of our "me-centered" paradigms.

What do I mean by that?

Well, for example, I may participate in a small group, supposedly sensitive to everyone else's sharing, but come away with simply an impression about how I feel about the meeting, and whether I felt heard by everyone else, or even whether I got anything out of it.

Or to hit closer to home for me, I preach a sermon on Sunday, but instead of sensing w

hat God is doing in Fred or Jane or Marianne, I am more worried about how well I did. Secretly I whisper to my wife, "How was that? Was I okay?" If there is a big response, I may interpret even that as meaning something about me and as a result, I feel good about my performance.

Yet, when I consider Jesus and how He ministered, I realize His focus was never on Himself. After preaching The Sermon on the Mount, perhaps the greatest sermon in the history of sermons, he did not whisper to Peter, "How was that? Was I okay?" It wasn't about Him, but about what God the Father was doing.

Even after His challenging message in John 6 about "eating his body and drinking his blood," where lots of people got offended and stomped off, He was not full of remorse. He didn't worry, "Oh man, I really blew it. What am I going to do now?" He seemed prepared even for His inner circle to leave Him as well.

Paul seemed to have gotten out of his own narcissistic bubble. "If I were trying to please men, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ" he says in Gal. 1: 10. That's in contrast to the Pharisees, about whom Jesus said, "Everything they do is done for men to see" (Matt. 23: 5).

I believe the main antidote to our self-centeredness is The Cross. On the cross, Jesus demonstrated that He had laid down the self-determined life and had taken up the God-determined life--a life of reverent submission. If we want to be His disciples, we must do the same. "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (Luke 9" 23-24).

Are you serious about following Christ? Take up your cross daily and, like a heavenly sledge hammer, it will begin to break your narcissistic bubble.