True and False Humility

   The disguised narcissist is cloaked in a garment of humility and self deprecation. He/she gives the impression of having a deflated sense of self and a diminished ego. The disguised narcissist presents a picture of being like everyone else, just plain folks----but he isn't. Distracted by his offhand, low key manner, many of us fail to notice that we are dealing with a certified narcissistic personality. -- Solid Rock Vista Cult


    It seemed like real humility.
    When our pastor first came, he seemed to me the most humble man I’d ever known. He rejected all outward manifestations of wealth, and seemed to be super spiritual. His wife said she was first attracted to him because he was totally sold out to Jesus. And so it seemed.
    The family lived on a shoestring, no fancy cars or fancy house. Very simple clothes. Not much in the way of toys. Wal-Mart was their favorite place to shop. They seemed to care about the poor, starting a food pantry and giving away food and money to poor neighbors near the church. How refreshing!
    I couldn’t understand why family after family left the church, when we finally had such a humble, non-materialistic man in charge. What I didn’t realize then was that there was a big difference between non-materialistic and humble.
    I didn’t suspect that this humble man might have a personality disorder.
    I closed my eyes to much that was happening because I so wanted to believe that this man was taking us to greener spiritual pastures than ever before. Oh, he could preach the word. He seemed to love the word, and I listened in rapture.
    Meanwhile, people left or grumbled or complained, and the pastor preached against murmuring and complaining.
   Couldn’t they see that he was giving us the real meat? Verse by verse through the Bible. How could that be wrong? What was wrong with these people?
    I figured the problem was with them, that they weren’t ready for meat. That’s why they left or complained. They were sinning and couldn’t handle the light. They were immature. They couldn’t handle truth.
    Instead of listening to them, I ignored the red flags flying all around me.
    What I didn’t know was that this man displayed signs of a disorder, a condition that makes social interaction difficult to say the least.
    The man could not endure any criticism, no matter how gentle, how needed, how true. He used the pulpit to preach against those who criticized him. One time he preached against potlucks, of all things, because a couple had asked for the reinstatement of monthly potlucks, and he viewed that as criticism. He equated the desire for these potlucks to desire for the flesh, and with the couple sitting in the pews he pretty much called them the lowest sinners on earth, without naming names of course.
    The couple had been members of the church for more than 20 years. The husband was only recently convicted and seeking the face of God. He’d listen to this pastor’s sermons on tape as he traveled for his job. He was starting to bloom in Christ, and then – cut off, preached against, derided. This couple used potlucks to invite unchurched friends to church. People nominally members of churches they never attended wouldn't attend this church. It seemed disloyal. But invite them to a potluck and they would come. That was different. So potlucks and invitations to church using potlucks -- that was their ministry, and a very fruitful ministry it was, too.
     Meanwhile, the worship team leader noticed something odd about this pastor. Though the pastor wanted to sing and play on the worship team, he refused to come to practice like everyone else. Consequently, he and his 12-string guitar were regularly out of tune and messing up the sound. Even worse, the pastor would reach over and turn up his own volume on the amps and turn down everyone else’s.
    The worship leader gently asked him to come to practice and stop messing with the volume controls. The pastor agreed. But he wouldn’t keep his promise. The odd behavior continued. And in retaliation for the “criticism,” the pastor took away the last song from the worship leader. The last song had been a time of jubilation when kids ran in from Sunday school, full of smiles, and everyone worshiped together to the music in a joyful celebration.
    The pastor knew that taking this away would hurt the leader.
    This narcissistic problem, the inability to deal with perceived criticism, led to other problems as well. In the space of a few years every family at the church when the pastor first arrived was gone. New families had come and some of them left, too.
    Occasionally, after hearing the pastor preach about persecution against him, someone would stand up in church to defend the pastor, but the mere mention of a problem sent the pastor into retaliatory mode. The speaker would have a ministry removed or given some other punishment even though he was just trying to help the pastor.  Harsh words, relatives ejected, preached against.
    This is not humility. It might seem on the surface like humility, but it isn’t.
    There would be a series of loyalty tests, and loyalty to the pastor was what it was all about. Are you loyal to me? Let’s find out. Loyalty to me is the same as loyalty to God. Let’s see how loyal you are.
    So a decree would come down, often a trivial one, but sometimes a major one. Whatever decree it was, it would hurt someone. The children may no longer play in the park after Sunday school unless the pastor’s wife is present. We may not stay to allow men to go up for prayer at Promise Keepers because the pastor must go back right at that moment and work on his sermon.  You may no longer give a communion devotional. You may not hold a Halloween alternative night. You must record attendance on Sunday school charts. You must not hold board meetings. All the decrees were flung out there to be used as loyalty tests. You must prove you are loyal to me. To be loyal to me is to be loyal to God.
     Inevitably, someone would balk and eventually leave. The rest of us would try to be loyal. We would ignore the pain of the offended party, fix the blame on them, never on the pastor, and show how loyal and dependable we were.  He would push us to the limit to see how far our passivity would go.
   We did this time and time again, not questioning, not asking why so many left, wounded and disillusioned, until it happened to us enough times and until we see enough bleeding sheep that we could no longer choose the pastor over someone we loved or over reason or over truth or over our conscience or even over the Word of God.
   It took a long time being out of the group to understand the mechanics, how things worked the way they did and why this man behaved the way he did. I'd made excuse after excuse for him, but finally ran out of excuses and was forced to face the truth that he had a personality problem.

    It seemed like humility, but we found out, sooner or later, that it wasn’t.

See also: The disguised Narcissist