NARCISSISM, SELF-ACCEPTANCE, AND SUICIDE

Scripture is full of wisdom, and it often contradicts the judgments of today. For instance, today’s wisdom equates blessedness and mental health with the elimination of suffering and negative symptomology. However, Jesus defines blessedness in a very different way:

•    “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:3–5)

The blessed are not the successful but those who are poor in spirit, mourners, and the meek. Likewise, we tend to admire those who have a high self-esteem and radiate self-confidence, while this is the very opposite of Scripture’s ideal:

•    Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good. He plots trouble while on his bed; he sets himself in a way that is not good; he does not reject evil. (Psalm 36:1–4)

To flatter ourselves is not to engage the truth about ourselves, for we are all deeply flawed, our only hope is in the love and mercy of our Savior. However, self-flattery is a rejection of the truth and a retreat into the darkness of deceit, both self-deceit and the deceit of others. It is a hardening of the conscience, which enables the proud and arrogant to increasingly embrace evil. It is the antithesis of self-acceptance!

However, this is the wisdom of the day. Teachers are taught to give their students positive affirmations. Parents are warned to feed their children with messages that will build their self-esteem. Psychotherapists are likewise offering the same medicine to their clients in the form of unconditional-positive-regard, assuming that this will be a cure for all their problems. Instead, we have raised a generation of self-absorbed narcissists who have become addicted to the positive-affirmation drug and require increasingly high doses.

Do these strategies work? Matthew Sleeth argues that Suicide has become epidemic. He cites one university that had to close its doors because of suicides:
 
•    Classes were canceled in an effort to prevent a suicide outbreak — or “suicide cluster.” This year, 10 million Americans will wrestle with whether or not to end their lives. One and a half million will be seen in emergency departments for suicide attempts and ideation. Every 11 seconds someone attempts suicide. America’s suicide rate now ties the all-time high experienced in the Great Depression of the 1930s: 14.5 per 100,000 per year. https://www.christianpost.com/voice/the-next-epidemic-is-worse-than-the-first.html
 
Sleeth regards this epidemic as far worse than these stats reveal:
 
•    In the 1930s, they did not have the medical technology to reverse overdoses, dialyze off poisons, and mechanically ventilate those who temporarily lost their respiratory drive. They did not have in-school depression screening, a national suicide prevention hotline, or a 911 emergency system. No effective medical treatment for depression existed. Today, one out of every eight adults takes an antidepressant. In short, without the invention and intervention of modern medicine and trauma systems, our suicide rate would be 200 to 300 times higher than has ever been experienced at any time in recorded history.
 
What is the remedy? First, we must pinpoint the cause. What has changed? Is life more stressful and threatening? Or is it our inability to cope with our problems?
 
While the extensive interventions of the mental health community have failed to stem the problem, I think that they have even inflamed it. They have failed to provide real hope.
 
Why do people commit suicide? It is not just a matter of pain but a lack of hope that the pain will subside. If one has hope, one can endure. The late psychiatrist Victor Frankl observed, during his internment in a National Socialist death camp, that: “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future…was doomed.”
 
I think that this is our problem. We too have lost faith. Why hasn’t psychotherapy been able to fill the gap? Aren’t psychotherapists trying to inculcate hope in their clients? Of course, but perhaps this is the problem.
 
The hope of today is self-hope. However, when our hope is in ourselves, this is where we turn for hope to face our anxiety, depression, and stress. However, we are turning to ourselves, the source of our problems, in a vain attempt to find hope. It is like hiring a burglar to protect your home.
 
This spike in suicide is also associated with a decline of the influence of Christianity, especially among young adults. God used to be our hope when we found that we couldn’t cope with the pressures of life. When we felt ourselves inadequate failures, His Word would reassure us:
 
•    I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)
 
What a comfort to know that our Lord is always with us. When we feel unlovable, He would remind us:
 
•    to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:19)
 
To know the love of Christ is to be filled with God. This includes hope that this God who had loved us, even when we were His enemies (Romans 5:8-10) and is working all things for our good (Romans 8:28), even amid suffering. To know this is to know whatever our pain might be, He is lovingly with us. It is like committing ourselves to a trusted surgeon to remove a tumor. It might entail a painful convalescence but believing in the doctor enables us to endure. How much more is this true with our all-powerful and loving God!
 
In Spirituality & Health Research: Methods, Measurement, Statistics, and Resources, Harold G. Koenig, MD has done more to survey the available research regarding the question of what is associated with positive mental and physical outcomes than perhaps anyone else. He has identified religion/spirituality (R/S) as the key element. Ironically, it is this very element that has been banned from the various forms of psychological intervention. Here is only a small sampling of what Koenig has found:
 
•    DEPRESSION: “At least 444 studies have now quantitatively examined relationships between R/ S and depression, and 272 (61 percent) of those found less depression, faster remission from depression, or a reduction in depression severity in response to an R/S intervention (ten studies at a trend level). In contrast, only 6 percent reported greater depression in those who were more R/ S. Of the 178 methodologically most rigorous studies, 119 (67 percent) found inverse relationships between R/S and depression.”
 
•    SUICIDE: “We identified 141 studies that had examined relationships between R/S and some aspect of suicide (completed suicide, attempted suicide, or attitudes toward suicide), and 106 (75 percent) reported significant inverse relationships; 80 percent of the best designed studies reported this finding.”
 
These same phenomena are paralleled by a plethora of anecdotal findings. The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, wrote, 15 years later, in Further along the Road Less Traveled about his journey from Zen Buddhism to Christianity. He had repeatedly observed that his Christian clients would improve, no matter how serious their psychiatric condition. Peck concluded:
 
•    The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth…We cannot lose once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us holiness…We are guaranteed winners!"
 
Daily, I remind myself of His overflowing love for me that I might enjoy the “fullness of God,” lest I slip into despair. I can no longer survive without the certainty and tangible presence of His love. I cannot understand how anyone else can. Ironically, it is the hope in our Savior Jesus that is disdained and banished from the public sphere.