Narcissists are consumed with maintaining a shallow false self to others. They’re emotionally crippled souls that are addicted to attention. Because of this they use a multitude of games, in order to receive adoration. Shannon L. Alder

The ego longs to be seen and admired, and all those who fall under its narcissistic spell see the world as their stage. Abandoning their true selves for the sake of thunderous applause, they live their lives in performance. 

But, as with all performances, the script has an ending. The actors take their bows. The audience goes home. The stage falls silent, and the performers go back to the dressing rooms, remove their costumes, masks, and makeup, and go home as themselves.

The Greek word for such a stage actor is hypokrites. In English, we transliterate that word as hypocrite, and we use it to refer to a person who acts as if he is one thing on the public stage, but lives as if he is another thing entirely in private.

None of us wants to be known as a hypocrite. None of us wants to be seen as a narcissist. We just want to be seen. Noticed. Accepted. Loved. 

The problem is that we are afraid that people will not accept us for who we really are, and so we fashion costumes that hide our true selves in hopes that we will be seen as the performer‘s persona and receive the requisite rounds of applause that go with it.

And the longer we play a role, regardless of how much recognition we receive, our true selves will continue to grow restless until we are seen and known for who we really are.

Today, we will wrestle together with the natural tendencies to fall into narcissism and hypocrisy and discover the rewards of being true to ourselves. 

Source Scripture

Matthew 6:1

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