Let’s discuss a character now. Whether they feature in a marriage, in the broader family, in a church, or, heaven help us, in leadership, or elsewhere is immaterial. Wherever they go they carry the potential for destruction. Their heart is set on deception, and as Diane Langberg points out, this is founded on a heart that is self-deceived.
The fact that they think they can get away with deception before the One who sees and knows all should leave us all incredulous. That they kid themselves in their self-justification, proving their action is narcissistic, defies any sense at all. Who would bother to even try to “outsmart” the Lord of glory? Only the one who does not believe!
In their being deceived—for who would knowingly go ahead and put their head on the eternal chopping block—they have no defence. And if they knowingly mete out abuse, as most deceivers do—i.e. deliberately—they hold God in contempt. But there is no defence in them heaping a blessing on themselves when they say, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” (Deuteronomy 29:19).
Two Stages of Deception
The first stage has been set out above—the decision beforehand to go one’s own way and to make of oneself one’s own god. Narcissists make themselves into their very own idol, which is a self-deception.
The first deception, then, is the narcissist’s agreement with themselves that they believe falsely is right; that other people are to serve their purpose, rather than them, themselves, serving with diligence God’s purpose for their lives. They are self-deceived.
The second stage deception, then, is the product of the thinking of the narcissist; that other people exist for their own personal gain. Their purpose in God has been contorted. Rather than God being served, theirs is a deception that they themselves are to be served while holding up the façade that they’re serving God. They deceive others.
Two situations occur as an outworking of this spiritual crazy-making: 1) they get away with it on this earth (for they sure won’t get away with it in heaven!), and 2) they do get caught, and they either a) deny it all and continue to run and not face the destruction they caused, or b) they contrive a “repentance”. Few, if any, narcissists ever recover, and that would take following through with a PROGRAM of recovery—for the full effects of recovery to stick.
So, let’s look at repentance through the Langberg quote. First of all, fake repentance and then genuine repentance.
The Hallmark of Fake Repentance
Two indicators that Langberg quotes are red flags straight away: “words and tears”. Let’s look at why words and tears are signals of a fake repentance.
Words are words of promise, of feigning contrition, and of deceiving their way out of doing the real work of repentance. Anyone who wishes to minimise their recovery will NOT recover. “I’m never going to do it ever again... you wait and see; I’ll show you and everyone that I’m a good person... God will transform me!” and myriad other things. Words are cheap and the more words of promise we hear from them ought to lead us to be more suspicious of the repenting person’s true heart.
Then there’s tears. All of us who are compassionate souls are suckers for the waterworks. And narcissists who are clever (sociopaths) are very well adept at getting the chin to quiver and getting the cheeks wet. Tears are a red flag, especially when they correspond with words of promise.
The Genuine Shape of Repentance
Continuing the theme of tears, those tears of regret and of no defence are another matter entirely. True contrition can certainly be teary, yet with no defence, just an earnestness to put things right, and to that end, a commitment to a program of behaviour change ensues where they do not look back.
The best repentance I ever saw was from those who turned their lives around in AA. Admittedly, these usually had very dramatic recovery stories, but what cannot be lost is what we can see about the depth to which AAs go in their repentance.
They don’t just stop drinking. As if that were the only problem they have! No, AAs are trained that drinking is just the tip of the iceberg. Abusive behaviour for a narcissist is just the tip of the iceberg.
To recover from narcissism, there must be an admission that there is grandiosity about themselves, that they feel entitled to exploit people and situations for their own gain, and that they bear no empathy. There is a heart problem in that there’s the proclivity for the deceptiveness of heart.
All of us hate facing the deceptive nature of our hearts, but the irony is, we only get better, and are safe for others, when we face our deceptiveness, our hidden motives and call them for what they are. Narcissists are incapable of doing this. Only the person who can face their narcissism—because it’s a spectrum and we’re all on it—is not narcissistic, for they honestly repent of the characteristics of narcissism. The one who barks angry denials that they have “no narcissism whatsoever” is the one who cannot bear to repent, and these, front and centre, are usually the most hopelessly committed to their narcissism.
The only hope is a PROGRAM of repentance, because the changes to be committed to are lifelong changes. What true narcissist is going to submit humbly to an enduring process of repentance for transformation?
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