Jean Paul Sartre
With the continued rebellion against Christianity the inevitable and necessary consequence is the continued exaggerated presence of selfishness in the culture since selfishness is the necessary consequence of rejecting Christ. People who will not bow the knee to the God of the Bible always make themselves God and as God, the world revolves around them. This is selfishness and when multiplied by continued rebellion against Christ it blooms into rampant cultural wide narcissism. So, as a culture becomes more and more adamant about rebelling against Christ the effect is a corresponding drastic rise in the mental disease of narcissism.
A couple of books I’ve read in the past bears this theory out. Christopher Lasche’s (The Culture of Narcissism), and Diana West (Death of the Grown-up) point out this very thing. Lasche and West both saw the symptoms but struggled to diagnose the cause. Their inability to diagnose the cause is found in the fact that if they have any Christianity, that Christianity they have doesn’t impinge upon their worldview thinking.
Consistent with the above observation regarding the rise of narcissism is the corresponding rise of both sadistic and masochistic behavior. The inflated ego of the self, being in rebellion to the Lord Christ, and so having no way to deal with personal sin, will turn in one of two directions. The narcissist will turn in the direction of seeking to cast all of his sin upon those in his orbit of relationships. Not having a sin-bearer the narcissist will seek to make everyone else he meets to serve as his/her own personal sin-bearer. Taken to its inevitable end the narcissist becomes a sadist.
The only other option for the person without Christ is to seek to lay their sin and guilt upon themselves. These people will in turn become masochistic, involved in all kinds of ways in which to frustrate and/or hurt themselves.
There are other inevitabilities that arise when people refuse the God of the Bible. We especially see the rise of narcissism but a culture that rejects Christ will also be characterized by;
1.) Statism
2.) Power religion
3.) Escape religion
4.) A return to chaos as a means to bring in order.
More about those in my next post.
