“The counterfeit, the spiritual narcissist…….. For her, the Bible is not a mirror for self-examination. It is a hammer for winning arguments. ”
Partially transcribed from “Echoes of Obedience”
There is a counterfeit in YOUR church. SHE/THEY are a masterpiece of deception, a nearly flawless imitation of the real thing. I am talking about the woman who believes she has perfected the performance of godliness, but whose heart is a throne room dedicated to the worship of herself. The narcissistic woman pretending to be godly.
She is the most dangerous person a sincere Christian can encounter because she speaks the right language. She knows your values and she uses the very things you hold sacred as her primary weapons of manipulation. On the surface, she is everything you thought you wanted. She is pious. She is passionate. She quotes scripture. But in the quiet reality, you feel a soul crushing emptiness. You feel a constant sense of condemnation of not being good enough. You feel a spiritual fog that has settled over your life since you met her. And you are confused because her performance is so convincing that you have begun to believe the problem must be you. But the Bible tells us that a tree is known by its fruit. A performance, no matter how skilled, will always have cracks in the facade. A counterfeit, no matter how perfect, will always fail under the scrutiny of a trained eye. God has not left you defenseless. He has given you the tools to become a spiritual auditor, one who can discern the difference between the genuine article and the fake.
So, enter a deep biblical audit of the three great currencies of the kingdom, grace, truth, and authority. Because how this woman handles these three things will reveal the true allegiance of her heart. What do you think is the hardest thing to discern about a person's godliness at the beginning of a relationship? What is most easily not as it seems?
The first and most revealing audit you must conduct is the audit of grace. The entire Christian faith is built on this foundation. We are all broken, flawed sinners saved not by our own merit, but by the unearned unconditional grace of God through Jesus Christ. A woman whose heart has been truly humbled by this reality will be a conduit of that same grace to others, especially to the person she is in covenant with. A woman who is merely performing Christianity. A woman with a narcissistic heart will be incapable of this. She will weaponize weakness, both yours and her own. Sign number one, she uses your weakness as a weapon against you. A true daughter of God operating from a heart of grace will cover your failures in love.
As 1 Peter 4:8 says, And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”
When you are weak, when you fail, when you sin against her, she may be hurt, but her ultimate goal will be your restoration. She will offer forgiveness freely because she knows how much she has been forgiven, but the counterfeit cannot do this. A woman with a narcissistic heart is a silent scorekeeper. She will store a meticulous, detailed record of every mistake you have ever made, every foolish word you have ever spoken, every time you have let her down. And she will keep this record not for the purpose of forgiveness, but for the purpose of future ammunition. In your next argument, when you try to hold her accountable for something, she will pull a file from her mental cabinet and say: "You have no right to talk to me about my tone of voice when you remember last month. you. Your past failure is used as a weapon to silence your present legitimate concern. She doesn't cover your sin in grace. She preserves it in bitterness, waiting for the perfect moment to use it against you.
Next: She re-brands her own weakness as a permanent identity. A woman of God who is confronted with her own sin with a flaw in her character will through the conviction of the Holy Spirit eventually be brought to a place of repentance. She will see her impatience, her pride, or her selfishness as sin to be warded against and put to death. The counterfeit does something far more insidious. She takes her sinful character flaw and she re-brands it as an unchangeable part of her identity, demanding that you accommodate it. Her chronic impatience is not a sin to be repented of. It's just how she's wired. Her controlling nature is not a sin. She is just a strong woman who knows what's best. Her emotional outbursts are not a lack of self-control. She is just a passionate person and you need to be less sensitive. By rebranding her sin as her identity, she absolves herself of all responsibility to change. It becomes a job to manage her sin. You are expected to walk on eggshells to avoid triggering her passion. You are expected to submit to her strong nature. She does not crucify her flesh. She demands that you build a comfortable shrine around it. The second audit is the audit of truth. For a true believer, the word of God is a lamp, a sword, and a mirror. It is our ultimate authority.
But for a person who is performing godliness, the Bible is not an authority to be submitted to. It is a tool to be used. How a woman relates to the word of God is one of the clearest indicators of the state of her heart.
Next: she uses the Bible as a hammer, not a mirror. A woman who truly loves God loves his word even when it exposes the darkness in her own heart. She allows the Bible to be a mirror to show her where she needs to change, to repent, to grow. She submits to its authority.
The counterfeit, the spiritual narcissist, does the opposite. For her, the Bible is not a mirror for self-examination. It is a hammer for winning arguments. She is often remarkably skilled with scripture. She can quote verses, construct theological arguments, and use Christian ease with stunning proficiency. But watch how she uses it. She almost always uses it to prove how you are wrong, to justify her own desires, or to condemn those with whom she disagrees. The word of God in her hands becomes a weapon of pride. If you try to use scripture to gently correct her, she will have a dozen other verses twisted out of context to prove why that passage doesn't apply to her. For her, the Bible is not a source of truth to be humbly received, but a library of ammunition to be expertly deployed in the service of her own ego.
Next: She prioritizes new revelations over ancient scripture. A heart that has made itself its own god cannot ultimately submit to an external authority, even the Bible. So, it must find a way to create a higher authority. And the classic way a spiritual narcissist does this is by elevating her own feelings, dreams, and words from the Lord above the clear established truth of scripture. She will be a connoisseur of the new thing God is doing.
She will have dramatic dreams, prophetic insights, and deep emotional feelings about the will of God for your lives. And these subjective experiences will always conveniently align with her own desires. If the Bible clearly commands one thing but she feels God is leading her to do another, her feeling will always win. She has created a personalized feedback loop with a God who sounds remarkably like her. This is a subtle but profound form of idolatry. She has rejected the objective, unchanging word of God as her final authority and has replaced it with the subjective ever changing throne of her own emotions. A godly woman tests her feelings against the word.
A narcissistic woman tests the word against her feelings. Grace and truth. These are two of the foundational pillars of our faith and a counterfeit will always handle them improperly. Of these two audits, the audit of grace, how she handles weakness, or the audit of truth, how she handles the Bible,which one do you think is a more challenging area for a good Christian to discern clearly?
This is the final and in many ways the most definitive audit. A person's true heart posture toward the authority of God is most clearly revealed in how they respond to the flawed human and delegated authority that God has placed in the church. A heart that cannot submit to God's shepherds will not truly submit to the chief shepherd. Partially transcribed from “Echoes of Obedience”
Finally, there’s the history of ordering followers to distance or altogether cut ties with their own family, throughout the reign of her tenure at WOFF. She is ordering the Christian to allow her control over her own personal connection with a family that most surely loves them and doesn’t understand this harsh transformation. The counterfeit will attack the character of the family as ungodly, wicked or other “greatest hits”, such as in the case of Woffwatcher.
There is no “Godly” reason for this, just her twisted logic and appetite for control. There is no logic either.
As people have been telling you all of this time, “you need to get out of that toxic place”. They may be sinners, but sinners are also children of God. And they can be right too. Here I refer to my favorite observation: “Even a bad restaurant has customers” makes my point.
Keep eating. Just go to another restaurant.
-WOFFWATCHER
Remembering John Huddle
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