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Biblical Antecedents

Of course, bullying has been around from the beginning. We see it in many Bible stories. Sometimes the reasons for the bullying are given. Joseph’s brothers hated him because he was their father’s favorite, and when he told them his dream, “they hated him even more” (Gen 37:3–5). They thought him arrogant, “this dreamer.” Conspiring to kill him, “they took him and threw him into a pit,” but then settled on merely selling him into slavery (Gen 37:18–19, 24–27). The story of Joseph’s eventual forgiveness of his brothers (Gen 45:4–24) is one of the most remarkable stories of reconciliation in world literature.

Pharaoh’s oppressing of the Israelites was a kind of bullying, even though it happened at the level of the state and was enacted upon a whole community. He “oppress[ed] them with forced labor . . . and made their lives bitter with hard service” (Exod 1:11, 14). He felt threatened by their physical vigor and fertility. Nor are the later Jewish kings free of political bullying. King Jehoiakim had Uriah—who “prophesied against this city”—murdered (Jer 26:20–23).

We know that Jesus was bullied, as well. The Roman cohort stripped Jesus, crowned him with thorns, mocked him by saying “Hail! King of the Jews!,” spat on him, and struck him (Matt 27:28–30). But the religious leaders’ attacks on Jesus were just as bad. Besides instigating the case against Jesus in the first place, the “chief priests” and scribes mocked Jesus on the cross, saying “he saved others; he cannot save himself”; they joined the Romans and the thieves in taunting him (Matt 27:41–44; Mark 15:31–32). Whence comes this arrogance and cruelty of secular and religious authorities?

Such cruelty is all too common. The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the “enlightened . . . being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution . . . suffered mocking and flogging” (Heb 10:32–33; 11:36). Paul expects apostles to be treated like the dregs of society, made “a spectacle to the world . . . beaten . . . like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things” (1 Cor 4:9, 11, 13). Will new ideas always meet such vicious opposition?

And does this abuse have to happen within the church, as well? No. We need to watch out for it, in order to prevent it. We need a behavioral ethic that works proactively against abusive behavior. We need to take the love mandate as seriously as Paul did: “Through love become slaves to one another” (Gal 5:13). This is an intense commitment, but a necessary one. Without love, we are nothing more than a social club. But if we start practicing the difficult but transformative ethics of Jesus, the church becomes a force for the only kind of social change that is deep and long-lasting—change that is based upon transformed individuals.

Instead, we see behaviors that look like the “same old same old,” and make us wonder if the church has made any difference in people’s lives. Love is the litmus test that shows whether we are serious about our faith: “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death” (1 John 3:14). Do we really hold ourselves up to this standard? Or do we have selfish cliques, corrupt leaders, or power bases organized to prevent certain kinds of change? Can our self-image as a loving people stand up to thoughtful examination? How honest are we with ourselves?

The Worldly Church

We should not really be shocked or surprised to encounter sinful behavior in church. The churches reflect the world, and this world is made up of flawed people who create “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels . . . factions, envy,” and more (Gal 5:20–21). The way of the world infects the church, eroding the foundations that Jesus established. People who are tenderhearted but unskilled at political infighting sometimes get swept out of the church. This turns out to be nothing new. The Apostle Paul, with some sarcasm, warns against ill will in the church: “If you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal 5:15).

Even people who have good intentions for the welfare of the church can become very competitive and jealous when they think someone is intruding on their particular mission. Longtime church volunteers tend to develop a strong sense of ownership of the church or a particular aspect of it in which they have long been involved. Experienced volunteers can become very prickly about intrusions on “their” territory. Even if the conflict that ensues stops short of “biting and devouring,” it can easily lead to “anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions” (Gal 5:20).

Despite our religious rhetoric, we are sensitive human beings who can get our feelings hurt if we feel we are being disrespected. Also, we are often unconscious human beings who are unaware of the extent to which our narcissistic selfishness is infecting our service activities. A pastor cannot always discern beforehand just how sensitive a particular church volunteer may be, or how likely they may be to take offense at any perceived intrusion on “their” territory. Managing these relationships can be very tricky, and may require extraordinary patience on the part of the pastor.

We need to lubricate our relationships with plenty of love, so that when disagreements happen, they happen within a relationship where love already exists, and the disagreement can be discussed calmly. A healthy church will have debates and disputes, but will keep them within the enfolding presence of love and respect. Almost any problem can be solved if people remember to act respectfully toward others. But narcissism and manipulation can undermine the functionality of a church, leading to territorialism, factionalism, and various kinds of attacks. The manipulator may be skilled at cloaking his or her real motives, and the attempt to reach mutual understanding could be met with contempt. The territorialist has an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and a sense of entitlement and grandiosity. Of course, pastors can fall prey to these behaviors, as well.

Healthy respect and self-respect are legitimate needs. Genuine mutual respect is a two-way street that requires generous and forgiving attitudes on both sides of the relationship. If one side harbors a grudge or clings to territory, there will not be much progress in resolving conflict. And if the church is not a place where ethics are practiced, why would people want to join?

There are certain kinds of church members who look for ways to exercise power and pronounce judgment within the church. Thomas Bandy calls them “controllers.” They “gravitate to positions of power particularly on official boards, finance committees, trustees, property committees, personnel committees. . . They roam through the body of Christ judging, micromanaging, blocking initiative, and generally damaging the cells of the body.”1

A blog by James McGrath touches on the subject of longtime church volunteers who bully and push people around. The blogger bemoans that some churches are “held hostage by volunteers. . . . Who is going to rebuke someone who is always fixing things around the church?”2 McGrath hopes that churches can become places where “bullying instincts” can be overcome. This needs more intensive study, I think, since the tendencies of self-assertion and protective controlling or “caring” are widespread, and most churches have not made a priority of examining the psychology of bullying or the ethics of power.

Another writer sarcastically suggests that “being a church bully is good business these days. . . . Bullies are often supported in a small group that likes to keep up on the latest church gossip. . . . As a bully, you can find allies who are ready to support you, who will offer behind-the-scenes support to your behind-the-scenes bullying. . . . People will worry that challenging bullies is unkind or unchristian.”3 Parker says anyone in any position can be a bully—the hard part is that “Standing up means risking being unpopular.”4

Kenneth Haugk wrote an influential book some years ago that addressed the problem of toxic individuals and cliques in the church, whom he calls “antagonists.” He makes it clear that he does not use “antagonist” to refer to “people on different sides of an argument” or to the “Honorable Opposition”; he is referring to people who “go out of their way to make insatiable demands, usually attacking the person or performance of others. These attacks are selfish in nature, tearing down rather than building up.”5

Dennis Maynard makes similar observations after interviewing forty pastors who had been hurt by antagonists in their congregations (and using twenty-five of these cases for his book): “We can no longer afford the luxury of denying that there are dysfunctional personalities in congregations that want to hurt clergy.”6

The problem is not just with laypeople, of course. It also exists with clergy, especially those who aspire to rise within the regional organization. Eager to ingratiate himself with his district superintendent, a member of a district committee may go along with anything the DS does, even “piling on” when the DS has decided to target someone. Piling onto a chosen scapegoat is a common technique for winning approval from higher-ups. This shows that the ancient patronage system has not disappeared; it’s still who you know, not what you know.

Self-serving careerism is probably as common in the churches as it is in other fields of employment, although it is somewhat disguised in the attempt to deny its contradiction of biblical values. Hypocrisy thrives in the gap between our declared values and our real motivations. Values (the ones really practiced) create a certain atmosphere, encouraging certain behaviors. If we value control above all else, we will be competitive and suspicious. We create an atmosphere for conflict. Bullying thrives in such an atmosphere.

Maynard’s study is quite sobering. He affirms Haugk’s observation that there are certain antagonists who intend to do harm to a pastor. Maynard makes it clear that he is not talking about those who offer constructive criticism, even sharp criticism occasionally, but about those who set out “to hurt, humiliate, destroy and remove the senior pastor.”7 What was most shocking to me in his book was the high degree of complicity of the bishops in the mistreatment of clergy. Of the twenty-five cases that form the basis of Maynard’s study, when accusations against the pastor came in, “only a couple of the bishops in our survey even bothered to check with the clergy and the healthy parish leadership to determine if the accusations of the antagonists were true.”8 Most of the bishops in the cases he examined either remained passive or actively joined with the antagonists; even worse, the leader among the antagonists was often a retired or active clergyperson, or even a retired bishop.9 It is not just in Maynard’s denomination that this goes on.

Most churches have an ethical procedure for handling grievances, and they need to use it. In most churches, however, there is not much in the way of established procedure for handling misbehavior by laity. There should also be some thoughtful teaching, preaching, and even training in the prevention of slander and bullying. Forgiveness does not mean that we protect or give free reign to the thing (bullying, in this case) that is being forgiven. There is amazing forgiveness in Jesus’ kingdom, but that does not mean that there are no consequences, no adjudication, no education, no therapy.

What about the psychology of antagonists? They seem to be people who hold on to resentment, who feel deeply wronged in their lives, but are only dimly aware of how long they have felt this way, and are even less aware of how their vengeful feelings against people in the present are fueled by how they were treated in the past. The antagonist has never taken a long hard long at himself and his psychopathology.

People who are unable to recognize their own spiritual poverty and are unwilling to exercise any reflective self-criticism are displaying the classic signs of narcissistic personality disorder, on which there will be a section at the end of this chapter, but first there is more to say about group process.

An Atmosphere for Bullying . . . or Respect

If there is immaturity and selfishness within a group, and no process for prayerfully listening to differing points of view in the congregation under wise pastoral leadership, then blaming, bullying, and territorialism will manifest themselves. The gospel solution involves teaching and learning some interpersonal skills that can limit the destructive effects of bullying, and possibly even get the bully to examine himself. Some gospel-informed techniques include learning to discern and appreciate the good motives of others, consciously showing mutual respect, seeking understanding, and cultivating a generous and forgiving attitude.

Pastors, of course, need to be wise as well as harmless (Matt 10:16), shrewd as well as kind. The principle of learning to see the good motives of others may include learning to bracket out the bad motives that the pastor thinks s/he sees, at least until such time as an evil pattern of behavior is confirmed beyond a doubt.

At the risk of oversimplifying, I would graph these problems and solutions like this:

Problem	Solution: The Right Attitude	Practical Application
Factionalism	Mutual appreciation of others’ motives	Respect for differences
Territorialism	Mutual respect	Sharing, conferring
Blaming	Understanding, forgiving	Open discussion with attentive listening
Bullying	Empathy	Anti-bullying discourse and publicity

Why does “love” not appear in the solution or application columns? Because all of these solutions and applications involve love. Some involve practicing forbearance and forgiveness in the present (“Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other,” Col 3:13). Some involve taking the long view: having faith that God is working within the other person (“the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. . . . It is God who is at work in you,” Phil 1:6; 2:13).

But this is spiritual hard work, and many people strongly resist it. It is much easier to divide the world into allies and enemies, to dish out all blame to the latter, and to not do the hard work of self-critique. When enough people in a group decide to avoid inner work as well as interpersonal work, then conflicts will only get worse. When the love process breaks down, when feelings become inflamed, positions entrenched, and indignation stoked, respect is forgotten, and the group starts to look for a “fall guy” to blame. Sometimes it is the spiritual leader who becomes the target of mean-spirited political maneuvering.

There can also be pressures that come from outside the religious group. Political-religious pressures from outside Jesus’ group, and at least one disgruntled voice among his disciples, led to a conspiracy against Jesus. The religious authorities felt threatened by his liberating message and his authoritative presence. Jesus knew that he would “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders” (Mark 8:31), as had happened to many of the prophets before him (Luke 11:49).

In fact, every honest critic, every reformer, every nonconformist undergoes rejection, usually starting within the immediate family. Jesus was even said to be “out of his mind” either by townsfolk or by his family (Mark 3:21). And he commented more than once on the sad fact that “Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house” (Matt 13:57; and see Mark 6:4; John 4:44). To be a brave and original thinker is not an easy path to tread. Such a person must be ready to be treated “without honor.” It seems to be a law, a tedious, painful law of life, that those who manifest excellence and originality are usually resisted, resented, even punished “in their own country.”

Jesus was surprised that his apostles did not recognize this pattern. Did they not realize “about the Son of Man, that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased” (Mark 9:12–13). This last comment refers to the cruel treatment of John, thrown in a dungeon and then beheaded at the whim of an aristocrat’s daughter. Herod Antipas, who authorized the killing of John, was a bully from a long line of bullies. Herod represents the way of the world, the way of people when their selfishness is not restrained, when their minds are not enlightened by the gospel. It is not a Jewish characteristic or a Gentile trait; it is a common human feature. The unspiritualized human being, grasping after power and security, is a bully.

What is more surprising to many of us is to find deliberate cruelty going on in our churches, to find political maneuvering and backbiting in the board of trustees, the finance committee, and the choir. When did church become all about power, control of turf, “my way or the highway”? When did Christians become so worldly? Actually, this is nothing new; we see selfish competition among the apostles, and factionalism in the early church. Slander and backbiting can become contagious in a church. Cruelty and bullying seem to be the way of the world, and the churches are all too worldly.

One Gospel story begins with the apostles arguing “as to which one of them was the greatest” (Luke 9:46). Could they have been any more selfish? This is where Jesus shocks them by using a child to show them that “the least among all of you is the greatest” (9:48). The apostles will get into the same dispute again later, and he will have to tell them that a real leader is a servant (Luke 22:24–27; Matt 20:25–28). Of course, many church bullies are also volunteers who “serve” the church, but their service is poisoned by aggressive behaviors, the psychological roots of which are unconscious. Religious people can practice a moralistic and judgmental kind of bullying, commonly recognized as a “holier-than-thou” attitude.

Jesus as Defender of the Vulnerable

Jesus defended many individuals against bullying, and took steps to restore their self-respect. As he was walking through Jericho, he encountered a blind man begging. The blind man, finding out that Jesus was walking through the town, shouted to him, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38). The crowd that was with Jesus “sternly ordered him to be quiet,” but he shouted all the more. Jesus had the man brought near and simply asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Healing him, as the man requested, Jesus finished by saying: “your faith has saved you” (Luke 18:42). Jesus builds up the self-respect and praises the faith of this man whom others were trying to silence. I cannot imagine this man being silent ever again! He would have been a beacon of praise and gratitude from that time on.

Perhaps even more embarrassing (in that day and age) than a blind beggar was the woman with an issue of blood, who approached him as he was on his way to heal someone else. Here is another person shunned by her society, “suffering” (Mark 5:25), and bent over by shame. Yet she musters the courage to secretly approach Jesus, to touch his garment, and gets healing even from that timid step of faith. Jesus calls her forward and “she came trembling” (Luke 8:47), but he gently encourages her, saying “take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well” (Matt 9:22). Would anyone dare to shun her again? Would Levites and priests cross the street when they saw her coming? Or would they shun her for a different reason, because of the story she now undoubtedly had to tell?

Another important instance of Jesus stopping an act of bullying was when a woman was being criticized for anointing his feet. Jesus leaped to her defense: “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me” (Mark 14:6). Notice that his main concern is that people “let her alone”—stop criticizing her. All too often we focus on the Christology in this passage, but what about the simple kindness, the compassion of Jesus? That is where he begins: “let her alone.” He stands up for her in the face of a contemptuous crowd of people (including his own followers) who were considered socially superior to the woman. His defense of her is a defense of human spirituality, in opposition to labels of class, gender, and reputation. We should begin there, too, affirming respect for every child of God.

When the people of Jericho grumbled against Zacchaeus the tax collector, with whom Jesus said he would be staying, he defended the man, building up his self-esteem with the remark “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9). He could not have said anything more confidence-building than this! The man is a son of Abraham, the friend of God and father of the faithful. In that society, one gets to take on some of the prestige of one’s ancestors, so Zacchaeus, too, is faithful, and a friend of God. What a different message than the sneering attitude of the townspeople toward Zacchaeus!

In these four examples, we see Jesus uplifting people who had been marginalized because of deformity, impurity status, gender, and profession. But the most celebrated instance of Jesus’ defense of marginalized people happened when the apostles rebuked children for coming up to him. Jesus not only defended them (“let the little children come to me”), but “he was indignant” with the apostles (Mark 10:14), and he held children up to be emulated. Jesus says “the greatest in the kingdom” is the one who “becomes humble like this child” (Matt 18:4), something completely counterintuitive to the way we still think. He is highlighting the child’s trustingness: adults must be receptive, must “receive the kingdom of God as a little child” (Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17), and that means they must “change” (Matt 18:3). The receptivity of children is the standard by which one gains admission to the kingdom.

No other sage or prophet, no founder of a religion is so well-known for showing a high regard for children. There will be more to say about this in the section on Jesus’ critique of the patronage system. Here we must point out that Jesus also stood up for adults who were unjustly criticized. When his apostles were accused of breaking the Sabbath by gleaning, he defended them with two biblical stories, capping it off by saying, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matt 12:1–7). The criticism arose out of a fixation with ritual rules; the critics did not know the value of “mercy” (or “compassion,” NASB). God desires compassion more than any ritual observance, and the obsession with ritual correctness can lead to bullying—religious bullying. Fixation upon purity rules is devoid of love. Today there are many Christians (on both the Left and the Right) who have a kind of purity system which they use to judge and bully those who do not rank highly on their purity scale.

Jesus offered many lessons that militate against bullying, such as parables in which he exalts people from despised groups: a good-hearted Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), a self-effacing tax collector (Luke 18:13–14), a merchant who wants pearls (Matt 13:45–46). He works against the common bias against Samaritans, who had a variant version of Israelite law and cult. He questions the popular resentment of tax collectors, even having a tax collector as one of his apostles (Matt 9:9). He even undermines the smug contempt for merchants, building a spiritual teaching on the image of the merchant’s love for fine jewelry. There is something useful even in human connoisseurship. He repeatedly mocks the “holier-than-thou” attitude of those who looked down on merchants, tax collectors, women, and Samaritans.

Further, he undermines the contempt for foreigners several times, commending a Roman centurion and a Syro-Canaanite woman, and he even travels to Gentile territories (Mark 5:1; 7:24; Matt 15:21) and interacts with Gentiles. He honors a centurion because the man recognizes order in the universe (“I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes,” Matt 8:9), and knows that Jesus has a position at the top of the spiritual order (“only speak the word, and my servant will be healed,” 8:8). The Syro-Canaanite woman is honored for her faith, her persistence, and perhaps even her sense of humor, though it may be that the evangelists do not recognize her humor. (I see humor in Mark 7:28/Matt 15:27, but Jesus’ reaction in the following verses in those gospels does not indicate any recognition of that humor).

Jesus showed so much love for ordinary people, for needy people, for children, even for Gentiles, that any description of his personality must emphasize this feature. When faced with cruelty, he could comment on it with objectivity, without wrath. After being struck by a temple guard, Jesus said “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” (John 18:23). If the guard had any conscience he would have felt shame after this. Jesus calmly appealed to the guard’s sense of justice, trying to reason with the bully. Experience shows that this usually does not work; once people start acting violently, they become moral cowards, and their conscience is stifled. We do not know what the result was in this case. There was at least one person with whom this worked: the centurion at the cross, who, after Jesus’ death, said “Truly this man was a son of God.”10

The most amazing statement of forgiveness was when Jesus forgave his killers from the cross (Luke 23:34). Again, his considerate approach gave people a chance to exercise their conscience, if they hadn’t suffocated it completely. What we always see is that, although he was mistreated, he did not revile; “he did not return abuse” (1 Pet 2:23).

Jesus responded to the guard’s bullying by making a calm and truthful statement about improper behavior, but it requires a sensitive observer for this to take effect. The truth will be preserved if there is any sensitive observer (like the centurion) to appreciate it. This may be one of the meanings of “Let anyone with ears listen!” (Matt 11:15; 13:9; Mark 4:23). Truth is handed on by anyone who hears it. Jesus presents it as a gift; not saying that we must hear him, but that anyone who can hear him shall receive what he is giving. Truth is a gift that blesses all who receive it, not a hammer that pounds people into obedience.

Jesus responded to his killers with the merciful statement that they really did not know what they were doing. Jesus lets the success of his message be entirely dependent upon the chance that a sincere listener is present, and on the listener’s quality of reception. In this way, Jesus has faith in us, in our ability to “hear.” In this way God waits for us to be ready. Do we have ears to hear? Will we respond, or will we seek to break God’s heart? Many people truly have a streak of vindictiveness and hostility toward God, and they take revenge on God by being cruel to people.

Jesus understands this, and many other psychological complexities. He has remarkable insight into human character; his forgiveness is not naïve, but happens with eyes wide open. He calmly observes how self-deceived his enemies can be, and warns his disciples, “an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God” (John 16:2). Rationalization springs eternal in the human breast. Even people who are conspiring to commit murder can convince themselves they are doing right. Jesus knows about the tendency to rationalize, to twist the truth for selfish reasons, and he trains his apostles to recognize it in those who mistreat them.

We live in an age where the insights of psychology have deepened and broadened our understanding of human misbehavior, but we need to go further. Christians need to become more psychologically aware, so that we are not helpless when sin happens. Wisdom “will save you from the way of evil, from those who speak perversely” (Prov 2:12). Jesus modeled calmness, compassion, and trust in people’s receptivity to the truth, but also a firm stance against cruelty and hypocrisy.

The Narcissist

It is time to look at a recognized psychological malady: narcissistic personality disorder. Not every bully is a narcissist, but many of them are, and these are the people least responsive to kind and compassionate overtures of any kind. The reader can decide if these features sound familiar.

First it is important to state that there is a natural “residue of childish narcissism, i.e., the child’s natural self-love,” and that a “severe impoverishment” in the child getting its narcissistic needs met will tend to make more difficult “the later absorption of this narcissism into more mature self esteem.”11 So some residue of narcissism is considered normal. We are not talking about this normal phenomenon when we speak of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). The standard definition of NPD, from the DSM-IV, is “A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy.”12 People with this disorder are obsessed with power and self-importance; they cannot tolerate criticism and they lack empathy. While the person with mature self esteem will moderate his own claims in consideration of the views of others, the narcissist will devalue and disdain others, and “respond with despair and rage when their pressing narcissistic needs/demands were not responded to.”13 They frequently express contempt while secretly envying others. A person with narcissistic personality disorder will be “extremely sensitive to failures, disappointments, and slights. . . . To real or imagined slights, he responds with shamefaced withdrawal and depression, or with ‘narcissistic rage.’”14 Unlike psychotics, who suffer from personality disintegration and delusional states, narcissists are relatively stable and socially functional.15 They can “play the game,” and hold on to leadership positions for years, but their lack of empathy and moral principle injects poison into human systems.

We have to face the fact that techniques for handling normal conflicts simply will not work with narcissists. Chilling though it may be, there are people in the church who are “evil, who target moral leaders (usually pastors) for destruction.”16 A narcissist who is making a grab for power can lie without a twinge of conscience, and there is no way to have a constructive conversion with someone who lies. Negotiation is a useful technique for handling most conflicts, but it will not work when the complaint is coming from a narcissist, who does “not have a normal rational process.”17

A wholly different tack is taken by Randall and the field known as self psychology, founded by Heinz Kohut. This school of thought insists that narcissistic needs are normal, even in adulthood, but some people are better able to cope with the frustration of these needs, and some people lack good self-cohesion. Self psychology does not say that everyone is the same, but it does say that everyone has the same basic underlying narcissistic needs. I think this theory has much to offer, but its rhetoric is complicated and technical, and it may have limited usefulness in practical settings. However, its insights are important enough to receive some attention here.

Randall describes the three basic narcissistic needs that everyone has, although every individual will have a primary need among the three: the need to be mirrored and affirmed, the need for an ideal leader to look up to and from whom to borrow self-respect, and the need to have like-minded fellows. Randall writes: “Pastors and parishes long to feel whole and secure. Their selves reach out for responses that confirm that they are admired, immersed in the specialness of significant figures, and surrounded by like-spirited others”; both pastors and parishes may have “pressing narcissistic needs.”18 Kohut discovered the second of these needs when he noticed that many of his patients would start to show signs of recovery only if they could make a connection with Kohut and experience him as an ideal parental figure. But, “Inevitably, the narcissistically disturbed individual experienced Kohut as flawed and failing. When this happened . . . a wide spectrum of rageful reactions also poured out at the one who had dared to be so insensitive.”19

Randall looks at individuals and groups in relation to these needs. Every congregation has a sort of “personality” or culture deriving from its unique constellation of narcissistic needs and “and the quality of its self-cohesion.”20 Churches, like individual pastors, have primary narcissistic needs and have varying levels of self-cohesion. A pastor or a congregation with weak self-cohesion will experience chaos, despair, and fragmentation if its narcissistic needs are not met.

Everyone has a natural need “for mirroring acclaim,”21 for affirmation. The second category, idealizing needs, is where parishioners “whose self-cohesion is weak” manifest a need to “find their selves uplifted, supported, and spiritually nurtured by being in resonating contact with the revered pastor.”22 I tend to have contempt for this need, thinking that people ought to be adults and to stand on their own two feet, which shows that this is not my primary need. Self psychology has opened my eyes to the view that this is a normal and expected need for many people, and that we have to allow for it. The third level, where one seeks cohorts or fellows who have similar understandings to oneself, seems perfectly normal to me, which probably reveals that this one is my own primary narcissistic need.

Randall talks about narcissistic injuries or “narcissistic depletion and rage,” when there is a mismatch between the congregation’s longings and the pastor’s leadership, or even where there is an “unempathic disregard for the pastor’s personhood.”23 If the self of pastor or parish is weak, and they are not shored up with loving relationships, then “depressive withdrawal and lifelessness” may follow, for either pastor or parish.24 I know of a person who withdrew from a church for over a year, complaining of too many names on the mailing list and other obscure matters, but never telling the pastor what her real complaint was. She maintained a relationship with a previous pastor and waged an angry campaign against the current pastor from a distance, writing a negative letter to the district superintendent and broadcasting a passive-aggressive public letter full of vague complaints, never mentioning the pastor but praising a ministry in the church run by someone else. Somewhere underneath all this bluster and hostility was undoubtedly some legitimate need, but it was never expressed.

The problem is not narcissistic needs, since we all have them. The problem is “archaic needs” (stemming from childhood) that are not expressed in an adult and rational manner. A wise “pastor attempts to help them gradually transform these immature structures into internalized, empowering, creative-productive ambitions and goals.”25 I read this to mean that the keys are maturity and transformation, with ethics being implied. To make self psychology useful for me, I need to heighten the key themes of ethics, maturity, and transformation, and occasionally use more colloquial terms such as “control freak” or “a complete transformation of attitude.” I think most readers have some idea of what those terms mean. I can understand that a clinical psychologist would want to be more precise, to identify which of the three narcissistic needs is being frustrated for a particular individual, but I think most of us care less about that than about whether the person’s behavior is considerate and respectful of others. Is the person mature or not? Is the person experiencing spiritual transformation or not? These are the key questions for most of us.

Self psychology may help us to recognize that all people have selfish needs, and thus get us to recognize the gray area in human affairs, but sometimes we need to sharply distinguish between black and white. Sometimes we simply need to know whether or not it is safe to talk to a person, whether that person will become enraged by any attempt to have a dialogue.

Rediger’s much less clinical approach may be helpful here. Rediger speaks of a sequence of “agendas” or psychological needs. At the bottom are a person’s survival needs, where feelings are dominant; above that are identity needs, where thinking is dominant; the highest level is relationship needs, where thinking and feeling can be integrated.26 There are negative and positive emotions on each of the three levels. When one’s survival feels threatened, one feels fear. When one’s identity is threatened (often the case when attacks take place in church), one feels anger.27 When relationships fail, one feels sadness. To some degree, Rediger’s three levels can be made to correspond to the three different narcissistic needs of self psychology: the survival level pairing with the need to be praised, the identity level corresponding with the need to have an idealized caretaker, and the relationship level to the need for fellow thinkers. But again, it seems clear that, for practical purposes, we can focus primarily on the need for maturity, ethics, and transformation.

There can be no transformation for an unreflective person, someone who sees no need to change. The narcissist refuses to accept that there is any problem with his/her behavior or thinking. If members of a congregation are growing spiritually, the stagnant narcissist will stick out like a sore thumb. Only in a spiritually crippled congregation can a narcissist fit in nicely and not be recognized by others as someone who is not experiencing growth and transformation.

1. Bandy, Road Runner, 89–90.

2. McGrath, “Bread and Bullying”; “Exploring Our Matrix” blog entry for December 16, 2013.

3. Parker, “Twelve Reasons Why It Is Good to Be a Church Bully” on the site “The Millennial Pastor.”

4. Ibid. The article is followed by a helpful conversation among many participants.

5. Haugk, Antagonists in the Church, 25–26.

6. Maynard, When Sheep Attack!, third page of the Introduction, no page number given. Maynard’s website is Episkopols.com.

7. Maynard, When Sheep Attack!, 13.

8. Ibid., 114.

9. Ibid., 103–5, 110, 113.

10. The noun huios, “son,” without any article, should be translated “a son.” The NRSV gives this as a marginal translation in Mark 15:39 and Matthew 27:54.

11. Erikson, Identity, 70–71.

12. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, from http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/dsm-iv.html.

13. Randall, Pastor and Parish, 13–14.

14. Ibid., 34, 46.

15. Kohut, Analysis of the Self, 4; Randall, Pastor and Parish, 78.

16. Rediger, Clergy Killers, 123.

17. Ibid., 85.

18. Randall, Pastor and Parish, 118.

19. Ibid., 40.

20. Ibid., 117.

21. Ibid., 105.

22. Ibid., 108.

23. Ibid., 127.

24. Ibid., 122.

25. Ibid., 156.

26. Rediger, Clergy Killers, 113.

27. Ibid., 115, 117.