Living as a diakonos of Christ and pastoral care to the narcissistically entitled person / Gert Breed

Abstract

In many research documents, the current age is called the age of entitlement. Closely associated with entitlement is narcissism. When the church encounters such widespread phenomena, she should consider possibilities and ways to address them in her pastoral care. This theoretical argument of the article is that the church could pastorally care for a Christian who leads a life of narcissistic entitlement, by guiding him to lead the life of a diakonos of Christ according to the New Testament. The relationship between Narcissism and entitlement is described as well as the characteristics of entitled persons and how problems can develop from a narcissistically entitled attitude. A short description is then given of a pastoral process that can be used. Part of the counselling process is to bring someone in the presence of God (coram Deo) to understand what God’s mercy and his prescriptions mean to him or her in his problematic situation. Lastly different passages where the diakon words occur in the New Testament were studied and applied to the pastoral care of a narcissistically entitled person in the coram Deo phase of pastoral care. Based on the results, it can be concluded that in the coram Deo phase of the pastoral process, the pastoral care of narcissistically entitled persons can be enhanced by leading them to embrace and practise their identity as diakonos of Christ.