Narcissistic families and narcissistic rage in the Word

As we know, God not only gives prophets teachings to share with the Church but also uses them as neon reprogrammable billboards to express matters like the spiritual health or unhealthiness of the Church. When we covered the meaning of bricks as spiritual falsehoods, we looked at how the Lord told Ezekiel to draw Jerusalem on a brick to represent their spiritual darkness; and then to play-act besieging the city with divine truth. He told other prophets to behave similarly. Jeremiah, for instance, got told not to marry:

"2 Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place.

3 For thus saith the Lord concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers that bare them, and concerning their fathers that begat them in this land;

4 They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth" (Jeremiah 16:2-4).

The command for Jeremiah not to marry represents the absence of a marriage between charity and truth in the superficially religious but inwardly rotten Jewish Church. Jeremiah's not having sons or daughters represents the absence of goods and truths as spiritual offspring of a marriage between love and wisdom. 

When people marry love with wisdom concerning love, they bear the children of still more love and wisdom. One may compare this to a loving parent who becomes ever wiser about how to take care of their children in a loving manner. Or again, one may compare this to a relationship counselor who becomes better and better at guiding discussions between discordant people so that they can arrive at the healing of their relationships by discussing these on neutral ground.

But if no marriage between love and wisdom has occurred, then instead of goods and truths the offspring of this kind of broken relationship may be said to bear no offspring, as in Jeremiah's unmarried case, or to bear the offspring of sins and errors; as in the case of Hosea, whom the Lord commanded to marry a whore to represent the falsification of the Word by the Jewish Church in order to twist divine truth into justifying evil.

If people pretend to be religious while being inwardly rotten, then they may be compared to dung on the face of the earth; they cannot enter Heaven if they embody evil and darkness, so they go to places in Hell designed as dwelling places for those in sin and error; which the Word represents here as their bodies being given to the beasts of the field (evil desires) and the fowls of the air (excuses for them) to devour. 

The Lord also commanded Jeremiah not to "go into the house of feasting, to sit with them to eat and drink"; because "the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bride, and the voice of the bridegroom" will cease (Jeremiah 16:8-9). Again, this represents the absence of the true feast which involves eating love and drinking wisdom, making these part of one's spiritual body. So Jeremiah's not celebrating represents, in effect, the absence of anything to celebrate about. Someone's pretending to be religious does not put God in a celebratory mood.

So God uses natural situations like someone's not marrying, or their marrying a whore, to represent sin and error among nominally religious people. He also uses another natural situation to do the same thing: evil families. He even refers to the Jewish Church explicitly as an evil family:

"And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts" (Jeremiah 8:3).

The Lord wants to be family, but in no sense does He want evil family members. So He portrays rotten spiritual relationships with reference to rotten families. How does an evil family behave? Well, typically an evil family will spend its energy pretending to be good while punishing and ostracizing anyone in its midst who knows the truth about them; and who has the temerity to mention this aloud. This process, called scapegoating, involves isolating, rejecting, hating, and scorning a particular member of the family in order to have someone to blame for family evil other than those actually responsible. 

It would appear that Jeremiah himself belonged to an evil family; whatever the case may be, the Lord used language to that effect to represent His nominal Church's rejection of Him:

"6 For even thy brethren, and the house of thy father, even they have dealt treacherously with thee; yea, they have called a multitude after thee: believe them not, though they speak fair words unto thee.

7 I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.

8 Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against me: therefore have I hated it" (Jeremiah 12:6-8).

Sadly, too many families actually do behave in this manner towards one or more members, speaking fair words while privately setting traps for them. We call such families 'narcissistic families' because one or both parents have a serious mental illness involving malignant self-love; so that the children are not really loved but as extensions of the parents who have only one function, to please the parents while making them look good no matter what kind of abuse actually takes place behind closed doors.

Sometimes one parent in such a family with be the narcissist while another parent enables their narcissism, pretending that the family's rotten communications and behaviors proceed from just about any other source than the actual one, namely an evil person who blights the lives of their family members and children; this second person, called an enabler, will not really love the children very much either, since they will generally choose to cover the evil of their partner even if it causes their children to suffer. But compared to the narcissist, an enabler might as well be a saint.

Suppose that someone has been scapegoated by an evil family, or has been given a certain role otherwise from which they are expected not to deviate. What if the scapegoat does deviate and even shines, doing very praiseworthy and excellent things? One might naively expect that this kind of excellence would cause the evil family to change its opinion about the person while ceasing to engage in the grave sin of scapegoating them. But in reality, being forced to acknowledged excellence in a scapegoat has the opposite effect.

Let us look at reaction of evil people in Jesus' family to His wisdom and miracles:

"54 And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?

55 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?

56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?

57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house" (Matthew 13:54-57).

Instead of being pleased at the excellence of their relative, they had the opposite reaction and "were offended". We would describe such people as having been 'piqued'.

You see, an evil family does not like it when reality disagrees with their assessment of someone whom they have given a role from which the scapegoat or other family member is not to deviate. And they do not mind telling the world so! If the scapegoat discovered the cure for cancer, they would loathe him or her above all things on earth. Because the important thing in an evil family is not truth or excellence but the evil people who made the family rotten appearing perfect without any threat to their petty control. 

Earlier this week we saw the reaction of the Jewish Church to Christ's raising Lazarus from the dead, a symbol of raising all people, not just Jews, from spiritual death to spiritual life:

"47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,

50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not" (John 11:47-50). 

You see? The scapegoat's excellence meant nothing to them but a threat to their power. We see the same reaction when Christ healed someone with a withered hand:

"And they were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus" (Luke 6:11).

It says they were filled with madness, which in modern language would be called 'narcissistic rage'.

You see, few people get so wildly angry as those who love themselves above all things on earth and have been confronted with their real, rotten natures or otherwise forced to notice something that distracts them from preening and feeding their self-love. If you have never witnessed narcissistic rage, happy you! People who willfully dwell in darkness snap when exposed to truth; people who willfully wallow in evil snap when forced to notice good, especially if it implies that anything about them might be less than perfect. 

This brings us to one of the most interesting episodes in the Word, the selling of Joseph into slavery by his own brothers because they envied and hated him. This represents what the 'brothers' of the Lord would eventually do by calling for Jesus to be crucified. For it says that Pilate "knew that for envy they had delivered Him" (Matthew 27:18). 

Joseph here represents the Lord as to divine truth and to His Divine Human. We basically have a different version of the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen on our hands: for that parable, like this story, represents how the Lord keeps trying to get through to rotten people with divine truth which they continually beat and kill, finally going so far as to kill the son of the one who owned the vineyard; which represents a complete rejection of divine truth ever after. 

It says of Joseph's brothers that they "saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren" and "hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him" (Genesis 37:4). Have you ever felt words die in your throat around people who dislike you? Think about how Jesus did fewer miracles around His own family, naturally speaking, "because of their unbelief"... (Matthew 13:58).

People who dislike family members not because their relatives are evil but because they themselves are evil exude a palpable atmosphere which makes it more difficult to say anything right or do anything other than clumsily; a powerful atmosphere which invites the very clumsiness which it condemns and goes so far as to make speaking with such a person very difficult or even impossible. 

We see such a situation with Nabal, the evil husband of Abigail:

"for he is such a son of Belial, that a man cannot speak to him" (1 Samuel 25:17).

So his brothers did not even want to speak to him peaceably; and probably would have preferred not to speak to him at all. Such icy silence will often be the crowning gift of those who scapegoat their own relatives, after they tire of explicit nastiness.

So Joseph, having been given spiritual inspiration from God in dreams, had the 'temerity' to share this with his wicked family. Just as we have seen with Jesus, saying something or doing something excellent did the opposite of making him friends. He said that he had seen the Sun and Moon and 11 stars and various sheaves in the field bowing down to him. The Sun and Moon here represent the way that natural good and truth bow down and are submitted to and ordered by spiritual truth. There are decent loves in natural love, but these are only decent for real if subordinated to spiritual truth as represented by Joseph. 

His brothers consequently "envied him" (Genesis 37:11). He had been given words which have an enormously broad significance which far transcended his limited person and the persons of all of them combined. But all they could think of was the hit to their egos personally.

When Joseph approached them in the field, they contemptuously said:

"19...'Behold, this dreamer cometh.

20 Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams'" (Genesis 37:19-20).

When evil people hear good preaching or about divine truth, they react with contempt to such a person or to such truths. They use language such as to dismissively refer to them as a dreamer; thus casting themselves as realists despite knowing very little about actual reality. If you pay attention in natural life, then you will notice even practical idealists referred to with dismissive language by people who wish to disguise their selfishness as realism. 

As we know, they sold Joseph into slavery -- after having been talked down from murdering him to just selling him -- so that a chain of events commenced that led to their indeed being submitted to him in natural life; which continues to mean that natural desires must subordinate themselves to spiritual truth and ordering of one's life. But it actually happened in the story literally, and God watched over Joseph amid that slavery very carefully. 

Not only did God protect him and cause those around him to appreciate his diligence and the benefit that this represented for their interests; but He also raised Joseph up to be a powerful man who ended up rescuing his creepy family from famine. If an evil family in natural life has scapegoated someone whom the Lord can teach how to be decent and otherwise use, rest assured that He will watch over such a person as carefully as their families callously rejected them. 

What should someone decent think about the evil actions of an evil family which have blighted their lives and made it harder for them to achieve success? God has an answer, and Joseph learned that answer from the heart and told it to his brothers:

"20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. 21 Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them" (Genesis 50:20-21).

You see, his brothers never quite believed that Joseph truly forgave them! They thought that as soon as their father died then Joseph would promptly execute every one of them. They received, not executions, but forgiveness and wisdom about forgiveness; they received the fruit of how God will turn the evils which blighted our lives into amazing opportunities. Sometimes it will take a long time, even taking until the next life for some of this to eventuate; but God is an old hand at protecting His servants from evil even in their own families, and He will turn even evils committed against us into an opportunity to become a better person; a wonderful alchemical transformation if ever there was one. 

The doctrine of the Church teaches, indeed, that God only permits evils which can in some way play a constructive role in His overall plan. 

So we have looked at the natural and spiritual aspects of evil families quite thoroughly. If you have grown up in such a family and suffered physical or mental abuse, then I am so sorry. Learn everything you can about such families and guard yourself diligently from hating the people who have made what should have been a nurturing refuge into a creepy hellhole for you.

Remember, God will take you up if your parents or relatives reject you:

"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up" (Psalms 27:10).

This is not an idle promise but something the Lord actually does. Do not hate but forgive; and turn the evil that gets done to you into opportunities to become a still better person. Those who commit evil deeds against their own family members -- slandering them in order to hide the rotten nature of the family by projecting its evils onto a scapegoat -- will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and answer for their sins. 

Amen.