The Mirror Effect

A few months ago, I was at a convenience store, and the two men behind the counter, there was a song playing, and they couldn't help but they were dancing. I mean, they couldn't walk across, you know, when someone ordered something, they would think they were just dancing. And I walked up, I don't know, they must have been in there, I would say around 20, and I walked up and they were dancing, and I said, Okay, guys, tell me when that song was released. Now, when I've looked at it and said, you think this is Michael Jackson? I said, yeah. He said, it's not. And then he told me that, you know, the new pop star, whoever's doing it, it's not what I knew. He said, my generation finally has their own Michael Jackson. And I've thought about that a lot since then. The impact that Michael Jackson had for 40 years on culture. I mean, how many here know who Michael Jackson is? You know, it doesn't matter the age, right? We all know who Michael Jackson is. My first exposure to Michael Jackson was as a little kid. And it was the Jackson Five. And there's this little kid building out these songs and dancing across the stage and watching about television and my whole family were just sitting there mesmerized by this little kid. He just had all this talent. And, of course, we remember Michael Jackson for a number of reasons. One is a remarkable talent who changed pop music and brought new elements to pop music that had not been there, put together like that before. We also remember a man who slowly his time went on because he's been dead since 2009. We watched him go through bizarre behavior and self-destructive behavior as we watched his life unravel. And it got to the place where everybody was fascinated. I mean, you couldn't, you know, if you went online, if you walked by the checkout stand at the grocery store, Michael Jackson was on every magazine. Michael Jackson was the center as people watched and became enthralled almost with his self-destruction. You know, being in a hotel, but he stories up and holding his baby out. I think it's my baby, I can do whatever I want with it. And he's holding it over. If he let go of it, it would die. You know, the difference between his early songs, and if you ever saw the Thriller album, I mean, saw the video of the Thriller album, you were watching a man that was unraveling. Michael Jackson was both a purveyor of culture and a victim of a culture we're going to talk about. It's very important for us to understand, and it's very important for us to understand a relationship to our children. And it's not just children, though. It's interesting, if you look at not just him, but how culture has changed over the last 40 years. I don't care what age you are, like I said, how many of you remember Michael Jackson? We all remember him. But there was something very destructive about him that we found, unfortunately, fascinating. And it's that destructive nature, this part of our culture I want to talk about, because he was both a, like I said, he was a person that changed popular culture, but he was also a victim of what he was doing.

I mean, today we see it all the time, right? It's the rags to riches to partying to destruction cycle, and we're all fascinated by it. I would guess there's young people in this room who watched Hannah Montana, right?

And now Miley Cyrus, at age 22, it's destructive behavior. It's self-destructive behavior. It's frightening. If she doesn't come out of that, you can almost guess by 30 she'll attempt suicide. Or she'll be an alcoholic. She'll be married two or three times. I mean, it'll be a cycle of absolute destruction. And I say, how can, of course, she had this persona, right, on television, and you found out the real person had some real issues that never got dealt with. She pretended to be someone else. So as long as she pretended to be Hannah Montana, life was okay. When she said, who am I as a real person, it came apart. It came apart.

I read a book a number of years ago. It's called The Mirror Effect, and it's written by Dr. Drew Pinsky. Probably, if you watch television at all, you've actually seen Dr. Pinsky. Dr. Pinsky is, and I find it interesting, he wrote a book on celebrities, and he's a celebrity. I remember seeing it 20 years ago. Because he is a therapist to stars.

He's a therapist to rich people, famous people, rock stars, actors, sports stars. He's a therapist for them. He wrote a book called The Mirror Effect. The book is very, very fascinating as this man took this culture that these people live in and said, this culture is self-destructive, and it has become the norm in the greater culture. In other words, this culture within this group of people has become the norm within society.

And, of course, as a therapist, he said the problem is they're narcissists. Now, narcissism is an interesting mental illness. The word narcissist comes from Greek mythology. In Greek mythology, there was a man, narcissist, who was the best-looking man in Greece. This great athlete, great, great, just all the women loved him. And one day, he bent over and he looked into a pool of water, and he saw his own reflection.

Now, remember, this is Greek mythology, okay? But it's where the word comes from. We have a mental illness. You can go look it up, even Wikipedia, which I'm not saying is a great source, but you can even find, you know, we don't explain what narcissism is. And this man, that looked at himself, saw that he was so good-looking, he fell in love with himself. And he tried to touch it, and of course, as soon as he touched it, it rippled off and destroyed the image. So he spent his whole life trying to be the image of what he saw in the water. Instead of himself, he was trying to become the image of something else. And so finally, he literally died because he could not fulfill this image that he was trying to see. He could not figure out that he was looking at himself. He was in love with himself. Now, the Greeks used that to teach children certain principles. It's where, though, we get the word narcissism. And narcissism is a mental illness. Dr. Pinsky has come to the conclusion that almost all stars, whether it's music, whether it's actors, whether it's athletics, most of them, or many of them, are narcissists. And the problem is, they pass that mental illness on to example, to society. And he said he believes narcissism is rampant as a mental illness through our society. And when you realize what it is, he's right. And this is very important in understanding our children.

That narcissism is a mental illness. Here's the danger of narcissism. And I'll explain where it comes from and why we become narcissistic.

But here's the great danger. We become so self-centered on being the image that we see in the mirror. He calls it the mirror effect. We believe what we're supposed to be so much. We've got so obsessed with that. So obsessed with our own desires, so obsessed with our own needs, so obsessed with ourselves, that we cannot love other people. Narcissists of leads people, they cannot be married. They just divorce over and over. Or they just go for relationship to relationship to relationship. They have a real hard time. They usually can't raise children.

This is Michael Jackson holding his baby out over a...and said he loved his baby. And it was appalled when people said, you don't love your baby. In his mind, he did. You have to understand. I do love my baby. But he could not understand why people were appalled if he put his baby in danger. He could have died.

And so, narcissists believe they love, but everything's based on their desires. And his argument was, it's my baby. I could do with it whatever I want. You see? It's my baby. I could do with it whatever I want. And so, narcissists see everything in terms of my fulfillment, my desires.

I want you to look at a scripture that's very interesting where Paul in 2 Timothy talks about the human condition at the end of the age. 2 Timothy. Now, narcissism has been a problem with human beings since Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden, okay? It's not new. But certain societies become narcissistic. And what we're looking at here is a society that's becoming narcissistic, where it becomes the norm. If you study through history, any society that becomes the norm, becomes narcissism, they collapse into incredible dysfunctional behavior. It's self-destructive behavior. 2 Timothy 3 verse 1. But know this, Paul says, that in the last days perilous times will come. For man will be lovers of themselves.

And will be narcissists. The problem with the narcissists is they really don't love themselves. They love their own desires, they love their own feelings, but they love the reflection in the mirror. They're trying to be something they see in a mirror. And what's that mirror reflection based on? Lovers of money, narcissists love money. Boasters, they're really proud people. Proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents. They have a hard time relating to parents. They have a hard time relating to any kind of authority, except if they have it. I'm thankful. They're very unhappy people because they can never have enough. The house is never big enough. They never have enough cars. They never have enough clothes. They just never have enough. They're very unhappy people. Unholy, unloving. They have a hard time loving other people because their needs, their desires, their feelings always come first.

Unforgiving. They can never forgive anybody that they perceive did them wrong. If a narcissist, if you do something they perceive is wrong, ten years later, they still remember. And they still feel it. And incredibly deep love. Now, all of us have, you know, when someone hurts us, it takes a long time to get over. I'm not saying that's not normal. I'm saying this is an obsession. You have to understand with a narcissist, normal feelings become an obsession.

So if someone hurts you, you have a hard time forgiving them. That doesn't mean you're a narcissist. That means you're a human being. But a narcissist is obsessed, absolutely obsessed with it. They can't forgive. They spend their whole lives waiting for that person to be filled with pain. Waiting for that person to be hurt.

It says they are slanders, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors. They have very little loyalty to anything but themselves and other people like them. They're headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Having a form of godliness that is denying its power, from such people turn away.

It's fascinating as we become narcissists in a society, as it becomes the norm, it seems normal. That's what we have to understand. It seems normal. Especially, and I'm not picking on young people, I'm just saying when you're eight, ten, fifteen, eighteen years old, you're automatically, you know, you look at a five-year-old. They're not aware too much of their own feelings. They're just playing. They're just in a world of their own. But there is a point you start to realize you're reacting with the world outside. The first thing you think is everybody's looking at you. But as you go through that development stage and you're hypersensitive to your own feelings and emotions, which is normal, in that hypersensitivity, our culture can turn you into a narcissist. Where you never get over the hypersensitivity. In fact, you just become, you spend your whole life more and more hypersensitive. And at that point, relating to God becomes real difficult. In fact, relating to anybody becomes difficult unless they're doing one thing. Somehow appeasing your feelings. They're appeasing your feelings. Dr. Pinsky says this. I hate to quote him because he's a celebrity himself. I just think this is so ironic that we have a celebrity who is a psychologist of the celebrities. And his response is, they're all nuts.

Here's part of what happens with the narcissist. This fascination with self actually is not a fascination with who they are. It's trying to be something they're not. They actually are very unaware of themselves. He says this is the profound lack of self-knowledge and the inability to have an empathetic connection with others. It's very hard for a narcissist to feel empathy for other people. They just don't. Force narcissistic individuals to fixate on their reactions of others in order to shore up their own self-worth. What drove Miley Cyrus? I don't know. I don't know her. But what drove her to do what she did? I don't know if you saw when she just went wild on stage and did all kinds of inappropriate behavior when she went from head of Montana to this. Because she wanted to tell everybody, that's not me. But is this you? Or is this just the next generation of Madonna? Ask her who her hero is. It's probably Madonna. You said, I mean, I've got to now reflect what I'm supposed to be. The problem is, the problem with narcissism is you never deal with the internal problems.

You simply become a reflection of what you think you're supposed to be. He says, for the narcissist, the whole world is a mirror. Life is spent in constant pursuit of a gratifying reflection, a beautiful self-image to help stave off the feelings of internal emptiness. The Israel man has no concept of what God wants, but as a trained analyst, he can see what the real core problem is. He doesn't have the core solution. The modern narcissist seeks those reflections in the pages of glossy magazines, on the screens of their TVs and computers. The celebrity media Looking Glass responds with images of a privileged life where the participants are beautiful, charismatic, powerful, and free to act however they choose. Absolute freedom to do whatever you want, and they're beautiful and they're smart and they have money and they drive around in nice cars, and all the girls like them.

The mirror of celebrity reinforces every narcissist's belief that a world of constant, admiring attention is possible.

Come on, guys. When you got married, didn't you think you'd get a world of constant, admiring attention for the rest of your life and then found out that you weren't going to get that?

Man, there's a little narcissist in all of us. But this is an obsession, okay? This is an absolute obsession. This next line is just hiss and the L on the head. All you need to do is act sexy, play the diva, demand privileges, and party with abandon. And that becomes the reflection in the mirror. Instead of becoming who you are, you want to be Miley Cyrus. Now, we all do that to a certain extent, especially as you go through different stages of life, you have different people that you admire. I was over someone's house this weekend and he had a band cave, or this week, one of the members up in Nashville. He had the band cave and a big, you know, Titans flag on his band cave where he could sit and watch the Titan games. But he's not obsessed with it. It's just, you know, part of his life. But I met people that are obsessed with sports, to the point where those are their heroes. And just like every other hero, though, what we like is when he finally falls. We like it when we find out that this person guy used steroids and he's a drunk. Right? I mean, think of Tiger Woods. He's an incredible athlete. More people know about Tiger Woods because of his collapse of his life than they do about what he accomplished. Because he never retained the abilities he had. But everybody was fascinated with a man who had all these problems and he, you know, hurt his marriage and, you know, had to go to see therapy and, you know, certainly he went from the sports page to the front page. Why? A celebrity collapses and everybody rejoices. That's the problem with the mirror. Inside we're still empty and we're trying to be like this person, so we like it when we find out they're empty, too.

But for many people, that's the goal of life. And eventually they will collapse. All you need to do is act sexy, play the diva of the man privileges and party with the band and finally you'll be happy.

Now, I want to say something. Like I said, it's true that we're always a bit, you know, enamored with stars, but it wasn't until the 1930s that people were actually able to know about the secrets of the stars.

And it's very fascinating because it was in the 1920s and 30s that they began to hire publicist people that would feed rubors to radio stations and to newspapers about themselves. It didn't matter whether they were true or not. It kept them in the limelight. So everybody wanted to talk like Bogie. Now, some of you may know what that means. How many know what that means? Humphrey Bogart. Wanted to talk like Bogie. You know, that tough sort of growl that he had. He died before I was born, but I watched Humphrey Bogart, kids. I liked Phil Blauer when I was a kid, so... You know, say everybody wanted to wear that hat, that fedora the certain way, you know, and have that swagger, be tough as nails, and talk like Bogie. Now, you know, Humphrey Bogart's personal life was an absolute mess. It's amazing how many of them were drug addicts and alcoholics.

They weren't happy, but we had persona on the screen. We looked at that mirror, and we wanted to be like them. So this is normal. The problem is, we should grow out of it. Our society doesn't grow out of it because it's becoming the norm. Narcissism is the norm. It's a mental illness that permeates society.

We have to be very careful. Narcissism, as a societal problem, is a product of a philosophy. I'm not saying this philosophy produces narcissism, but it can lead people to narcissism. We must understand this. You're going to hear me talk a lot about secular humanism. Secular humanism is the main philosophy of our society. Someday I'll give a sermon or a Bible study, and I'll go through where secular humanism started. It started back in the 20s and the 30s. It took over the school systems because the people who started this philosophical viewpoint are considered, in fact, the man who led it is considered the greatest American view point.

He's an educator. He's been put on post-east dance. He's considered the greatest American educator of the history of the United States. He had a certain philosophy. For secular humanism, if you listen to most politicians talk, you'll realize they're actually secular humanists at the core of who they are. Most people who are actors, musicians, many of them are secular humanists. Now, they don't know it, but it's how they've been trained. I'll give you four basic tenets of secular humanism. There's a lot of tenets of secular humanism. It's based on evolution, by the way, as a fact. It's based on evolution is a fact.

If any of you have been to college in the last few years, you find out there's not much discussion or evolution in here. It's taught as a fact. To not believe it means you're stupid. That's part of the educational system. But here's four basic ideas, and I'm going to show you where that goes and how that affects us, specifically our children.

Secular humanism believes that human nature is basically good. The Bible says human nature is a mixture of good and evil. If you think human nature is basically good, then all you have to do is get the smartest people in a room and you can fix any problem. And all problems can be solved through education. And all emotional problems inside the educational system can be solved by simply building up the self-esteem of the people in the system. Now, does any of that sound familiar? The books that are used as the primary teaching tools in college today, not only in the United States, but in Europe, comes from the man who formed secular humanism.

These are his concepts. If we can build up their self-esteem and educate them, then all problems can be solved by simply taking the best, the cream of the crop, and they'll fix the problems. So education... I'm all for education, by the way. I mean, I... all three of my kids have a college degree. But you have to understand the foundation of the educational system is flawed. Second, all religious ideas are equal as long as they accept each other. All religious ideas are equal as long as they accept each other.

So religion is a private matter. The reason it's private is because secular humanists believe that religion is rather primitive. It's primitive. The need for religion is primitive. Therefore, if you're primitive enough to believe that you shouldn't have same-sex marriage, you can say that in your case. If you're a church, you cannot say it in public. Because we have to accept your stupidity, because we're accepting. But we will not accept your stupidity in public. It's an interesting philosophy. We'll defend your right to freedom of religion, but it has to be private.

And you can really see that in Europe. People don't... We're going to France with a feast. The one thing we're told is don't walk down the street with a Bible. People look at you like you're weird. French people go to church. The majority of them actually still go to church. But they wouldn't walk down the street with a Bible, because you see, secular humanism believes that it's a private matter, and it should not be done publicly.

That's why, when we do the Viola Today program, the programs we do, if we talk about abortion or same-sex marriage as being wrong, they cannot be shown in Canada or Australia. They will shut down our church there. They will literally shut down our church. Because that can be said privately, can't be said publicly. So this is a very strong philosophy. You think, well, how in the world did our world change? If you study secular humanism in its last 80, 90 years of history, where we are is incredibly predictable, because the philosophy has become the norm. A third is the major cause of all crime is poverty.

Now, there's some truth in it, that poverty can cause people such hopelessness that they can commit crimes. But you know what the Bible says? The Bible says crime is a product of corrupt human nature. Therefore, the solution to crime is different. It has to do with dealing with the person's human nature. Secular humanism is, we just got to get everybody out of poverty. And so you know what you do?

You build bigger and bigger and better schools to educate them. That's why you'll see people living in poverty, and in the middle of all this poverty is this beautiful school.

But it really hasn't changed anything. If we educate them, and we put more money into it, that will bring them out of their poverty. Now, what to get? There is some truth to that. You can't get out of poverty sometimes unless you have education. I'm saying it's not totally wrong. I say, but its premise is wrong. Crime, because if that was true, nobody that was wealthy would commit crimes. And I have to ask you, how many of you... I don't want to raise your hands. How many of you really trust wealthy people?

They're a bunch of crooks. Yeah, they shouldn't be crooks. They have money. You said, if it's a proof that it's not true, it's that wealthy people commit crimes. They just commit different crimes. They don't rob 7-11s. They commit giant fraud and get 50 million dollars instead of 50. It's still a crime, you see what I mean?

But this is part of the tenets of a secular union. So the fours I'm going to bring out, and this is very important. The ultimate in human freedom is sexual freedom. It's actually one of their tenets. They word it a little different, but that's what it means. If you go online and look up secular humanism and go to a secular humanist's website, you'll find numerous others. They'll tell you they're tenets. There's one set of tenets that started in the 1930s. They were updated in the 1970s. When you read them, you'll say, well, that's our educational system today. Yeah, because that was the purpose. Well, number four is the most important expression of human freedom is sexual freedom.

So you think, how in the world do we get to transgenderism? It took 50 years to get to transgenderism. You have to back this up to no-fault divorce in the 1960s. Abortion in the 1970s. These are all elements of a thought process that says, this is where we're going to go. Because that's the ultimate freedom. So, I don't know if you remember a couple years ago, there was a woman, a college student, I saw it on CNN, that was before Congress, promoting that she had been basically, the government was failing the people because it was not supplying her with the pill. It is the responsibility of the government to give her the pill. They say, how did they come to that conclusion? Because it is the responsibility of government to support freedom. The greatest of all freedom is sexual expression. Therefore, it is the government's duty to supply me with that right. And when they don't, they're an abusive government. Maybe it's time to overthrow that government. You have to understand secular humanism. There's a step by step, I'll say, logic to it. In other words, there's an ABC. But because, like all trends, trends don't happen overnight, you don't see the ABC, you just see the results and say, how in the world did that happen? Now you think, well, what's that have to do with narcissism? The problem with secular humanism, it never deals with the core inner problems that you and I have, because they're spiritual.

So the problem with secular humanism, eventually it creates people who live life for one purpose.

Because they're looking in a mirror and trying to be like the mirror. Because they don't know how to deal with the emptiness. If I drink enough, I don't have to deal with the emptiness. If you've ever tell enough alcoholics to hear that story over and over again, that's how I deal with my pain. But when you come out of this stupor, you still have the pain, right? But pain can be so great, emotional pain, that we as human beings will do anything to get away from it for a little bit.

If we don't have another foundation. Secular humanism can't give you a different foundation, it's based on evolution.

So what do you do? Well, you act sexy, act like a diva, and party with abandonment. You see? You live for the moment, cramming as much into that moment as you can. Now, letting it get a moment is good, as long as that moment is in the context of non-destructive behavior. Narcissism, by its very definition as a mental illness, is self-destructive. And we see it in my... Cyrus, we saw it in Michael Jackson, we see it all the time. Incredible talents. Self-destructive behavior. And they become the mirrors. Now, let's just look at a couple results of secular humanism. This is a huge subject, but I want to introduce the subject today, in terms of thinking about this, in terms of our children. But not only that, how you and I grew up. We all grew up with our heroes, and that's not wrong. But we have to be very careful that we don't emulate them too much. Or become obsessed. One of the things that happens with secular humanism is that people believe that the promotion of religion... No, the promotion of spirituality... They hate religion. They'll talk about being spiritual. The promotion of spirituality, without any recognition that God is in charge. The sovereignty of God is... Whatever makes you feel spiritual is good. Now, if we're going to be biblical-based Christians, we have immediate problems with that, don't we?

Jeremiah 17. Here's a passage that hits this whole concept of feeling spiritual without recognizing the sovereignty of God. He goes, feeling spiritual. Ask people, I don't care what age... Up through baby boobers, people my age. And you'll find a lot of them will say, I'm a spiritual person, I'm not a religious person. What does that mean? Well, I discovered my own path to Jesus. I've discovered my own inner God. I've discovered Hinduism. I've discovered whatever that makes me feel religious. Jeremiah 17, verse 5 says, This is how Pinsky, with no biblical background, begins to describe narcissism.

Sometimes certain amount of emotional security, they feel they like what's happening, but they have a certain amount of emotional security based on this relationship with God.

And verse 9 is very important. The heart. What would you say is the most deceitful thing in the universe? I don't know, Satan. Yeah, but wait a minute. What does it say here? The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

At the core of who we are, without God's spirit, without God's help, we deceive ourselves, which is exactly what narcissists do. I felt so bad last Friday night when me and my girlfriends went out and went to a bar and got picked up by a bunch of guys. We went out with a group and I went home with the guy and drank all night and got drunk, woke up the next morning and did the walk of shame. You know, were you trying to rush home so that what sees you, who you were with that night? Because you don't even know who this guy is.

But you're doing it again the next Friday night. Because that's how I'm dealing with my lack of lava. That's how I deal with it. I don't feel loved. Because you don't feel loved Saturday morning when you wake up from that either. That's the problem. It's like narcissists sticking his finger in that water and wanting his own reflection to disappear. Oh, I did this! Oh, look how beautiful I am! Boom! It's gone! I can't see! It's self-destructive.

Her stance says, I the Lord search the heart. I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. Promotions of spirituality without recognition of God's sovereignty. Another thing that this secular humanism leads to is the promotion of good deeds without moral character. I remember talking to a man one time who, he said, you know, my neighbor, he says, I felt really, really confused. He said, I was inferior to my neighbor. He said, he goes to church on Sunday morning and then goes and works at a food bank and talks about how wonderful it is that he and his wife and his food bank had served all these homeless people. And he said, I was starting to feel very inferior. I said, well, just go work at a food bank. Why do you feel inferior to that? Go to a good deed. He said, well, the way he talked all the time, it made me feel like maybe I'm not a Christian because I didn't go to the food bank this week. And he said, then one day, he said, well, my wife and I won't be at the food bank this week. He said, why? He said, well, once a month, we fly out to, I think it was San Francisco, and we go to a wife-swapping club. It's really great. The promotion of good deeds without moral character. You see? My good deeds save me. Actually, what's strange, he's doing exactly what they accuse us of. So you're a Sabbath keeper. You're trying to earn your salvation. No, we're not. That's trying to earn your salvation. That's trying to earn your salvation. Should Christians do good deeds? You bet we should. Should we do them without moral character? Then we're just deceiving ourselves. But secular humanism leads you to that behavior. Because why? Why are you doing it? Because it makes you feel good about yourself. I do this because, wow, I felt good. I served those people some food, went home. I never have to see them again. I don't have to relate to them. That's all of the thing, isn't it? I have to relate to the people I serve? Another thing, secular humanism leads to the over-evaluation of nature while devaluating human life. It's the strangest thing. You will get a...someone who's really into secular humanism will argue, I mean vehemently, we can't cut down those trees because those eggs are the eggs of a certain kind of bird. By the way, I'm not saying we should go around and destroy the environment. In Genesis, we are told to keep the garden. We have a condition to take care of the environment. So I'm not an anti-environmentalist. I'm a conservationist. But understand where the secular humanists take that. We can't cut down those trees because that egg has life in it. That life is that bird.

But that egg inside a woman, that fertilized egg inside a woman, is not life. And we have the right to destroy it. How do they get to that conclusion? Remember, one of the great tenets of secular humanism is the ultimate in human freedom is sexual expression and sexual freedom. So, the killing of the human fetus, which is what it is, is okay because it leads to this freedom. But the killing of the egg, which is a bird, is against life. And see, how can you do that? That's holding both ends of an argument. You're arguing with yourself.

You see, where sexual humanism creates this thing that goes around and around, that's why you cannot win the argument. You have to say, yes, I agree with you. Those are bird eggs, and those birds are in there, and that needs to be protected. Oh, you agree with me? Yes, why don't you apply that to human beings? Now you win the argument. That's the only way you can get us to even know you won't win the argument, though. It's shut down. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, chicken eggs. This is a rocket science, okay?

Another thing I won't go through. I have a whole list of things it does, but we can go through a lot of scriptures here. But I want to just introduce us to this subject so that you can begin to understand secular humanism, and you can be able to see it in society, and why this change is taking place.

The promotion of individual rights without a sense of duty. Now you can see where that would lead to narcissism. Now, not all secular humanists are narcissists, by the way. Some of them, just because their personalities are that way, are very giving-loving people. So I don't want to say secular humanism equals narcissism. I'm saying the philosophy will lead people to narcissism because of what it promotes. But not all secular humanists are narcissists. Some secular humanists give their whole lives to helping other people. They'll go join the youth corps. So they'll go into a service field, like working at a hospital or something. So I'm not saying they're all narcissists.

I'm saying, though, if you don't have a strong sense of, real sense of self and right and wrong, this is where you will end up with narcissists. Because you're looking at a mirror of Miley Cyrus and your girl saying, that's what it should be. You know, in Jeremiah- or Luke, let's go to Luke 17. Like it's something Jesus said, I cut out 20 minutes of this sermon last night, knowing I still couldn't cover all of it.

I got up this morning, I cut out some more. So I realized I'll have to cover some of this at another time, too. But we have to understand that the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, what it says there in Timothy, what's the spirit of the age? Ours is second view of this.

Luke 17, 7. Jesus says, So likewise you, when you have done all the things which you are commanded to say, we are unprofitable servants, we have done what was our duty to do. The idea of duty. You know, duty used to be driven into young men so much that we would sacrifice ourselves for our wives and our families, right? Find a narcissist that will sacrifice himself for his wife and family. He won't. He can't. Duty says, sometimes you say, my feelings don't count now. Right now. That doesn't mean all the time. Now you get a whole other problem. But right now, my feelings don't count. My desires don't count. Because I have a duty to a greater good.

It's hard for a narcissist to believe there's a greater good than themselves. And so we have the defense of individual rights. I will defend my right, but there's no concept of a greater good. Now we all have rights. We have rights given to us by our country we live in. We have rights given to us by God. I'm talking about an obsession, okay? There's an obsession with this. And so it becomes hard to have families. It becomes hard to hold down a job. No loyalty to your employer.

I talk to individual businesses over and over again, and they'll talk about, all I want is somebody to show up and at least try to do their work. And it's amazing how many guys will say, yeah, they'll show up for a week. Now what day they don't? I talked to one painting contractor, and he said he had one guy did show up for three months, then showed up to work one day. He said, where have you been? Ah, things to do. What do you want me to do today, boss? Well, you've been gone three months. I heard somebody else. Why'd you do that? Because narcissists don't have any sense of responsibility. I'm not saying someone who has a lack of sense of responsibility equals narcissism, okay? I have to be real careful here. Oh, this person's a narcissist. Now we go blame him. That's a problem about reading something by psychology. That won't analyze each other. Oh, that person's a narcissist. No, no, no, no, no. This is a...you know, think of Miley Cyrus. If you didn't see her on the stage, don't go look at it. He was on YouTube. That's narcissistic behavior, okay? It's the session.

So, you know, some people have an underdeveloped sense of responsibility. That's making them narcissists. It just means they have to learn responsibility. But you can see where secular humanism leads to this. And then there's one great point about secular humanism we have to understand and what we're seeing in our society today. Secular humanism will promote family values, but they define values differently. Have you seen the title of all commercial? Promoting same-sex marriage? There's at least half a dozen now major companies running commercials promoting same-sex marriage. Why? Because they've tapped in. They realize, ooh, if 50% of the people support it and they're in this certain demographic, they'll buy my product. So I'll give them my money. Because without values, everything comes down to who can make the most bucks.

Although it's interesting, people who buy into secular humanism aren't necessarily driven by money as much. They are driven by fame more than money. They'd rather be famous than wealthy. They want to be liked. Now that tells you something. We all want to be liked. Well, some people don't. Some people don't care. You know, I like to be liked. But sometimes you mean people don't like you. You say, well, I'm sorry. That's what you see is what you get, right? And if you have the right foundation inside of you, yeah, okay, you don't like me, I can live with that. The narcissist can't. They can't live with somebody that doesn't like them. That drives them nuts. The best thing to do is destroy them. So I'll just get in, I'll just call People Magazine and I'll give them a leak about you. So you see the front cover of People Magazine. So-and-so says this about so-and-so, right? And this person comes up and says, it's a lie. What are they doing? Oh, they're playing out narcissisms. I mean, they're just... You don't like me, so I'm going to destroy you. Well, I'll destroy you. It's childish. You know, these people are 45 years old. Yep.

How do we help children? Now, I did go through a lot of scriptures here because I think most of you could prove that the Bible says marriage is between a husband and wife. Right? I'm just trying to show you what's the evil in our society where it's coming from and why it's not going to change.

It may get better for a little bit, but overall it's not going to change because it's the core of the educational system. So eventually it will be the norm, and we can't change that. God could, but it would take knocking this country down to do it.

Okay, that's reality. So we understand what's happening and hold on to our values. How do you know if your child is getting into this mirror effect? Okay? How do we know it? A couple things to look for. I say child. I mean eight-year-old. This is really because...this is especially among girls, but remember some of that's normal. Okay? If your ten-year-old has...

You know, five years ago if they had Hannah Montana picture on the wall, that doesn't mean they're a narcissist. Okay? That means they liked Hannah Montana. Now, if they shave their head and they're walking around half naked like Mairi Silas, okay, they moved into an obsession. Okay? That's where you have to understand. You have to make sure that we don't move into obsessions. As I say that, sometimes we can just drive our kids away sometimes by not realizing, okay, we have to help them through a stage, not condemn to this, Oh, you pervert! Okay, wait a minute. Now let's help them through the stage. Let's work them help them through the stage. If it's obsession, we need to be very, very careful because now we need to deal with it. We need to help them through it. And helping someone through an obsession is painful. It's painful for them and it's painful for you. And anyone who's had to work with an intervention will know half the time that people hate you at the beginning of the intervention. They love you later. So we have to look for an obsession. So you have, if they have an excessive fascination with certain celebrities, just excessive. They have an obsession with wanting to dress or model the behavior of the celebrity.

So they just want, now I have to admit, my oldest granddaughter, she and I are trying to learn to do the moonwalk like Michael Jackson. That doesn't mean we're obsessed with Michael Jackson. I just can't figure out how he did it. Now we haven't done that for a while. About a year ago, she and I practiced and my wife comes in and my daughter comes in, what did you do? You know, Michael Jackson's boyard, and we're trying to do the moonwalk and it's like, just leave us alone. We're trying to do this. And by the way, I was going to use a bunch of country western stars. I thought, well, I need Nashville. I have to use country western. Of course, Miley Cyrus is her father's... Yeah, that's right. There we go.

Now, another thing to look at in terms of your children, they begin to experience a hypersexuality. I don't mean that he's 13 and suddenly staring at girls. Or 12 and boy crazy, okay? We have to work them through the normal stage of the life. I talked about hypersexuality. Where, okay, this is really over. You've gone to... That's all you think about. Sometimes that's an early sign of being caught up in this culture because our culture is hypersexual. This is hypersexual. It's not supposed to be this way. Children aren't allowed to be children anymore.

It's changing our biology.

Now, the next stage is very... We have to watch. Dangerous behavior like drug or alcohol abuse. I'm just saying this from a psychologist, okay? I'm going to talk about biblical points in a minute. He said, when you start seeing this, start looking what they're watching all the time or what they're listening to all the time. I remember sitting down with a young man who was just mid-teens, just having a horrible time in life. And I asked, he said, I want you to listen to the music I listen to. You really like it. I don't know what to call it. It wasn't heavy metal. It wasn't rap. I thought I'd never heard anything like it before. It was grunge on steroids. I'd never heard anything like it. It was just a guy screaming, there was no music, just screaming, basically satanic worship. And he wondered why. His parents could hear why he was having trouble. I remember he'd go on and on with a young girl, having trouble with nightmares. And I said, I want you to do something. I want your parents to come with me. I don't want to do it privately. I would let all of us go to your room for a minute. And there's a big poster of Freddy Krueger. You know how Freddy Krueger is. I think I discovered why you're having nightmares. Oh, I love these movies. I bet you do. But let's discuss what your nightmares are like. Someone's trying to kill me and I can't stop them.

You look at the person, you can't see the correlation here, okay? I understand the correlation. Obsession with those movies was causing nightmares that were the movies. So, a lot of this isn't that hard. We just have to be aware of where they are in their development. And what they're going through in their development. Why are they like that? Because you go through a stage where you like to be scared. It makes you feel alive. But you want to be scared where you're not really scared, right? I still like going down roller coasters. Why? Because they know they're safe. But if I knew it could fly off, I wouldn't do it. So I still like being scared on a roller coaster because I really know it's safe. Otherwise, I get older and I wonder if I'll have a heart attack going down with it.

What happens here? I don't want to get too deep into this because I only have five minutes left. What happens if we're not careful in early development stages between 8 and about 15 or 16? If we're not helping our children deal with their emotional development, they will start looking in the mirror of MTV or whatever it is they're looking at. And that will be the mirror in which they try to deal with their emotional development. That person can help me, or that way of life will help me. And so they become obsessed with those things because of a basic spiritual need and a basic emotional need. And it's easy for adults to say, what's wrong with you? Well, there's a reason they're doing what they're doing.

And it has to do with the spiritual need and the emotional need. And that's why if we can in any way turn our children to God, that's the first step. There is a God and He cares. The problem is, it's hard to sometimes get a 10-year-old to understand that God's relevant. It's hard. But we have to also let them know, by the way, we love you. But you are a mixture of good and evil. Because all of us are. And so there's good things about you and there's bad things about you, and I still love you. So let's accentuate the good things and let's work with the bad things. Because that's what I as an adult am still doing in my life. We have to let them know that. We have to let them know that. Now, I understand sometimes you're a mess because I am too. But God helps me and He'll help you too. Part of the problem here we really have to be aware of is that media, these are smart people. And I got to the place that didn't want to work on radio anymore. You can only say do and approve so many times, so you realize you're lying.

You know, it's like, come on, you put it in a new package. It's the same product. Do and approve. Do or cost it, you know. You're lying to these people. I don't mean to. MTV is as big as it used to be. How many at least know what it is?

Matthew. MTV used to be huge. Because it was the only videos we could watch. Now it's not. YouTube sort of destroyed it. But never years ago, MTV had a reality show. And they were advertising for young people, people in teens and in their twenties, to come on to this reality show. And here's how they wrote this. And I want you to think about this. I want you to think about 18. And you're saying, I'm going to get out of high school, and I don't know if I want to go to college, and I don't have a job, and I just want to party. Why do most kids don't get through freshman year of college? Because they party! Right? That's what they say. That's why they party. I want to have a good time. Girls just want to have fun. Okay? Boys just want to have fun, right? I just use that because it was a song.

Listen to this. This was the casting call to come on to this reality show. Do you long destruct into the world's most elite hotspots without a care in the world, except how fabulous you are? Ever wish the velvet ropes didn't exclude you from the social circle of the A-list? How about the fantasy of jet-setting around the world with the ultimate BFF, whose fierce style charisma and star power is only matched by your own?

Wow. My daughter, I don't know if she knows this, my daughter was 16. I had someone from an ad agency in Chicago say, your daughter should be a model, and we want to make her a model. And I said, why would I ruin my daughter's life?

He said, you could make so much money. And I said, why would I want to ruin my daughter's life? So, don't she do that or not? That's why she didn't become a model. Oh, the chance to watch structure stuff. Yeah. You spent three hours of makeup. You do all that, and at 23, you're a has-been. They throw you away! For the next 18 year old, 16 year old, they throw you away. I was listening to a interview on a talk show on a radio a while back, and the man said, you know, I don't understand. He was talking to a supermodel. He said, I don't understand why women don't look like women anymore. They're so straight. There's no curves. Of course, the originally did it because the television camera makes you look 10 pounds heavier. So, women had to be 10 pounds thinner to look normal on television. But they don't look normal anymore. And she saw it's very simple. Now, this is what the model said. Most of the designers are gay, and they're trying to make us look like boys. And then they throw you away. This is all about money. This isn't about you. It's about who can make money off of you. That's the reality of the cruel world. And that's the problem with this mirror effect. You think, you buy into that, and it's just an empty nothingness. You just stick your finger in water and watch your own reflection disappear. That's all you know. Here's what we can do. I said I had five minutes. I'm going to give myself five more minutes. We'll still end at 12. It'll be a fast closing hint.

First of all, we have to help them understand that God is relevant to his or her life. God is there, and he's relevant. We have to share what we've been through. All adults should be sharing with children. 8-year-old, 20-year-old, 25-year-old. They're not children of 25, but young people. We should be sharing what God has done for us, and we should be sharing. Sometimes this hurts, and sometimes it's hard, and it's okay. And we're here for you, by the way, because we're all in this boat together. Second, they have to develop healthy relationships with adults and parents.

So I find interesting about camp. I can remember going to camp, sitting down and thinking, oh, good, it's lunchtime, I can have a break. And taking a bite and looking up, and I'm surrounded by five teenage boys. And they're all staring at me, and I realize they're waiting for me to say something profound.

And I said, you know, man, is this macaroni and cheese? Good. Oh, then they all start eating. Okay, well, that's profound, let's eat. I understand. For a guy, at times, that is profound.

But we all know, that 15-year-old does somehow. I'm not good at this. I pretend I am, but I'm really not good at this. And I really don't know how this works. And somebody, show me, I'll pretend like I don't care, but I do because I want to know how this works.

We have to help them develop healthy relationships with parents and other adults. Other adults who have the same values. We have to help them develop healthy relationships with other children and other teens who have the same values. Because they'll pull each other along. They'll actually pull each other up instead of down. We have to help them experience positive personal growth and achievements.

They have to know what it's like to say, whoa, I did a good job. They have to know what it's like to say, I worked hard, I did well. You know, sometimes we'll beat our kids. I've only got a B. You know, I always tell my kids, if you put everything you have into it, you get a B or a C. I'm just proud of you. Now, you slough off and get a C when you could have got an A. Now, there's a problem. But if you did the best you can, that's good. That's achievement. And then, the last thing is believe that there's something more important to life than immediate gratification, selfish desires, and fame. I read a survey just a couple years ago. People in their 20s, they asked them, what is your number one goal of life? 51% said fame. 51%! Isn't it fame? Wow! That doesn't last long.

We excuse the professional athlete that we know is using steroids because we want to see him get that ball out of the park. And then, we just tear him apart when he gets caught. People sort of enjoy watching the celebrity meltdown. And you know how you know that? Go look at a celebrity magazine, or any magazine at the checkout counter. You say, oh, yeah, those kids buy that. Look who's buying them. They're people in their 40s and 50s and 60s. Okay, let's just be bluncher. If this is a generational issue or a single generation issue, it's cost generations because we've all been raised. I was raised. You were raised in a media society. This is the only time in history we have four generations of people raised in a media society. We're all affected by celebrity culture. We all are to one degree or another. So, we hitch our wagon to the new America's Got Talent person. And we hitch our wagon to that person. And we follow their career. And we get their CDs. And we go on and we download their songs. And we watch them get up in, you know, a little older, a little older. Sometime in their mid-20s, they have a meltdown. Finally, at 35, they never watched the thing with MTV. They used to have a series on. They would do the Life of Stars. They all had the same pattern. By 30, they were alcoholics, drug addicts, had been divorced three times. And by 35, found out, wait a minute, my agent stole all my money and I have nothing. It's like, I stopped watching after a while. It's just the same story. They just stick in different faces. And so, they start their final tour that lasts for the next 10 years because they've got to make some money because they're broke. Because they got taken advantage of by their agents and by the record companies and everybody else. We have to realize it's not easy money. It's not easy sex. It's not easy fame. It's not do what you want. Party hardy. And that brings happiness. There's cost to all that. And this secular humanism and the narcissism that helps generate is the norm. It's becoming the norm. And you and I have to help our children not go that direction because it'll destroy them. It's not because we don't want them to have good lives. It's because it'll destroy them.

God has a purpose for you and God has a purpose for everyone of the children in this room. Real success is rooted in a strong sense of identity as a child of God. And that He knows how this life works so He will live by what He says. If you're a young person, ask God to come into your life. Acknowledge. I pretty much get this messed up. That's okay. I'm ten years old and I still don't know what I'm supposed to do. That's okay. Go tell Him that He knows that.

I have these vague feelings of failure and I'm not worthy. Yeah, go tell Him. He knows that. He knows that. I'm so mad at my parents, but I just want them to love me. But I feel like I'm so bad I keep driving them away. Go tell Him that. Just go tell Him.

Ask God to help you see this because it's only in this relationship with God that you'll be able to avoid the mental illness of narcissism. And you'll find what real happiness and real success is because you will have the creator of the universe helping you and guiding you and being with you.