Guest Post by Lori Slaughter, Pastor of Living Well, Wausau, Wisconsin Noah’s ark is one of the most repeated stories in the Bible. It meant little to me, though. For over 30 years, I have placed my faith in the Lord Jesus. Raised Catholic, my parents taught me to honor God and respect His Word. All of my life, I have heard and read the Bible many times without a significant impact on my personal life. Stories of Abraham, David, and even Paul seemed distant from me, being alive at the turn of the millennium, though I tried to…
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When I first heard the term fawning, described as a trauma response, it hit me pretty hard. An empathetic and desperately self-conscious kid, I eventually grew into an empathetic and self-conscious adult. Marrying a narcissist did nothing to help, and I soon learned to become a people pleaser as a survival tactic. And for a long time after I escaped from my abuser, I didn’t question it. It had become second nature. I tolerated uncomfortable and even abusive relationships in my work and personal life, often falling prey to what I call quasi-narcissists. These people in our lives are self-centered…
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The father of every narcissist is, of course, the devil. He provides a perfect pattern card of narcissistic behavior, beginning with his fall from heaven. Just a precursory look at his words and behavior read like the DSM’s definition of narcissism. I have often had readers protest my Biblical analysis of narcissistic personality disorder. Their objection comes from the idea that NPD is a psychological term and, therefore, not Biblically valid. But depression is another clinical term often applied to Elijah, Jeremiah, and Jonah. It is a universal experience that afflicts most humans, if not all, at one time or…