My wife and I have worked with the disadvantaged for many years, and over those years we've seen various mental, emotional, and personality disorders, including Narcisistic Personality Disorder. NPD is not being fond of your reflection, it is a progressive and dangerous disease.
I've recently heard the term, Spiritual Narcissism.
From an article in the Vancouver Sun:
Spiritual narcissism works in subtle ways | Vancouver Sun
“Simply stated, spiritual narcissism is the unconscious use of spiritual practice, experience, and insight to increase rather than decrease self-importance,” May writes in Will and Spirit.
Spiritual narcissism infiltrates our egos when we start to identify with “trying to become holy,” said May, who treated addicts before he began supervising ecumenical spiritual directors at the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C.
Spiritual narcissism, May said, “makes the spiritual quest a self-aggrandizing process rather than a journey of deepening humility.”
The fact is, people have reasons for acting as they do. In some cases, this may have something to do with it. Just some food for thought.
Much love!
Scripture says avoiding sexual and other sins is our sanctification.
If obeying scripture is trying to be holy, then we are required to try to live a holy life, and we should all be guilty of it.
2Co 7:1Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit,
bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
1Pe 1:14As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
1Pe 1:15but as he who called you is holy,
you also be holy in all your conduct,
1Pe 1:16since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Eph 4:17Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.
Eph 4:18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.
Eph 4:19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
Eph 4:20But that is not the way you learned Christ!—
Eph 4:21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,
Eph 4:22to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
Eph 4:23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
Eph 4:24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Eph 5:1Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
Eph 5:2And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Eph 5:3But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.
Eph 5:4Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
Eph 5:5For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Eph 5:6Let no one deceive you with empty words,for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Eph 5:7Therefore do not become partakers with them.
Heb 12:14Strive for peace with everyone,
and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Heb 12:15See to it that
no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;
Heb 12:1624and
to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Not like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.
Heb 12:17For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.
2Pe 3:11Since all these things are thus to be dissolved,
what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,
1Th 4:3 For this is the will of God,
YOUR SANCTIFICATION: that you abstain from sexual immorality;
1Th 4:4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,
1Th 4:5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
1Th 4:6 that no one transgress and wrong his BROTHER in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly WARNED you.
1Th 4:7
For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.
1Th 4:8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
2Pe 3:14Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for such things, be diligent that you may be found of him in peace,
without spot, and blameless.
Note: without spot, and blameless…] The words are nearly identical with those which describe the character of Christ as “a lamb without blemish and without spot” in
1Pe 1:19,
They who expect the coming of Christ should be like Him in their lives, and be without spot, as James confirms:
James
1:27Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Do you get the idea we are called, expected, and required to lo live righteously, yet?
Shalom Aleichem