Get ready for a thread.

One of the privileges of therapeutic work is being welcomed into the inner life and sacred story of another human being. Yet, when you engage the story-work with someone who is diagnosably narcissistic, (in much the same way as it works with an addict) 1

you enter through armored walls of certainty protecting cherished securities built on unstable truths. Folks like this don't simply "change their minds." There is a need for a radical, inner re-orientation, a re-Storying process that is destabilizing, that provokes resistance, 2
that requires a long and painful wilderness of deconstruction and re-imagination. It took Saul three years in a desert to become Paul, to be re-Storied from fundamentalism to the Jesus-way.

This same dynamic characterizes collective narcissism. 3
When groups of people orient themselves around a particular person/ideology that meets deep needs for security, it's not surprising that they'll embrace factually in-credible things. Terrorist groups are groups of *believers.* 4
From the inside, it's unimaginable to believe anything else. And when threatened, the inner alarms sound with fury, the walls are re-armored, and the inner sense of threat is translated into a fight-response.

Groups like this will always be with us. But... 5
it's especially troubling for a follower of Jesus, like me, when the so-called alternative facts of the cause are wrapped in Christian lingo for the sake of a collectively narcissistic church-militant, conquering in the sign of a cross-draped-in-red-white-and-blue, 6
crusading against the infidels who don't share their constructed reality, conflating Cross and flag in a idolatrous amalgamation.

These kinds of groups were frightening to us when they flew planes into the Twin Towers. They ought to be just as frightening ... 7
when they ascend the Capitol steps wrapped in nationalistic garb.

In the end, these are groups that come and go throughout periods of history, who fizzle out ultimately because they've embraced a smaller story, a story unworthy to be called a Gospel (or good-news!) Story. 8
These cheap fundamentalisms can't offer the deep security, the ultimate hope, the radical belonging of the one called the way, the truth, and the life. My hope is that we'll grow weary of the church-militant with its false power and patriot peddlers... 9
...opening our hearts to a larger story of Love featuring the wide-open arms of one who doesn't demand your allegiance but invites your surrender.

Grace and peace, friends. (end)

More from Life

You May Also Like

MDZS is laden with buddhist references. As a South Asian person, and history buff, it is so interesting to see how Buddhism, which originated from India, migrated, flourished & changed in the context of China. Here's some research (🙏🏼 @starkjeon for CN insight + citations)

1. LWJ’s sword Bichen ‘is likely an abbreviation for the term 躲避红尘 (duǒ bì hóng chén), which can be translated as such: 躲避: shunning or hiding away from 红尘 (worldly affairs; which is a buddhist teaching.) (
https://t.co/zF65W3roJe) (abbrev. TWX)

2. Sandu (三 毒), Jiang Cheng’s sword, refers to the three poisons (triviṣa) in Buddhism; desire (kāma-taṇhā), delusion (bhava-taṇhā) and hatred (vibhava-taṇhā).

These 3 poisons represent the roots of craving (tanha) and are the cause of Dukkha (suffering, pain) and thus result in rebirth.

Interesting that MXTX used this name for one of the characters who suffers, arguably, the worst of these three emotions.

3. The Qian kun purse “乾坤袋 (qián kūn dài) – can be called “Heaven and Earth” Pouch. In Buddhism, Maitreya (मैत्रेय) owns this to store items. It was believed that there was a mythical space inside the bag that could absorb the world.” (TWX)
THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)