It’s your fault - Recognizing Blame Shifting

It’s your fault - Recognizing Blame Shifting

Part 13 of the

“When Respected Leaders Fail”

series

My Early Encounters with Narcissistic Leaders

Recently, we were talking with some old friends and someone started sharing about a toxic workplace environment they left. I’ve had a few as well. Thankfully, I am employed by a great company for nearly 20 years now, but I had a few really rough ones prior to this. Those experiences were gut-wrenching.

When you’re in an abusive relationship with a narcissistic supervisor, spiritual leader, partner, or spouse, the cycle of emotional responses cannot be quantified. When things go wrong, it’s your fault. When they go right, it’s their win. When you try to discuss an issue, you walk away feeling like a failure. When you try to leave, a litany of your inadequacies is thrown back at you along with all the reasons you will fail. When you challenge their integrity, they call yours into question.

You don’t realize you’re being manipulated—if you did, you’d leave. Instead, you doubt your own feelings and give the abuser more credence than yourself because you feel like you can’t trust your emotions. When the abuser knows Scripture, it goes to another level: they manipulate it to pit you against God Himself. Now you’re less than, and in the wrong with God, if you question how you’re treated.

The first time I encountered a truly narcissistic boss was when I took a marketing job at a business my father had run for decades before retiring. The new partner/part-owner pulled me into his office on day one and said if I was anything like my dad, we’d have problems. He then quoted a Bible verse claiming I was the slave and he the master—that meant that if he told me to jump, the only question I should ask was “how high?” I was shocked. I don’t remember how I responded. I was already in a bad emotional place after our business bankruptcy a few months earlier… so this didn’t help.

I lasted two weeks in that environment. I could sense his dislike every day. After about two weeks of near-constant abusive treatment, I snapped and called him an asshole on the phone—the first and last time I’ve ever done that. He said he was coming to fire me, but I believe I quit first. I’m not proud of it. His partner and my father’s longtime and highly respected boss was upset and asked me to apologize. He didn’t know the full context of what happened and I don’t believe I was in a good place to tell him. I don’t recall if I called, but I believe I did—as I remember it, I told him I was sorry he was an asshole.

I found another job—from marketing director to building decks—eventually landing with a hardware and lumber store—thinking it was behind me. But that company changed management, and the exiting manager warned me the new boss would target me because for some reason he didn’t like me.

I remember the management meetings at that store vividly. The boss would single out one supervisor, point at them, and then demand in front of the management team that they explain whatever issue he saw in their department—while the others stayed silent, thankful it wasn’t their turn. That cycle of instability rocked me for about a year until I was offered a job elsewhere and soon after that I landed the job I have now!

When Narcissism comes to Church

While I was working at this emotionally draining hardware store, my wife and I started attending a small charismatic church. I was asked to join the board. At the time, my theology leaned slightly toward prosperity but I wasn’t all in on it… this church seemed to go all in and followed Kenneth Copeland teachings.

The pastor was certainly a passionate and compassionate believer but he felt God wanted him to have a full salary that seemed out of reach for the small church. It was more than most congregants earned. I pushed back on that, the board’s legality, and the increasingly intensified prosperity focus. Most Sundays he made a great show of the offerings, visibly placing his own check in the basket before it was passed around. I saw it as manipulation but couldn’t name it then. When I was eventually asked to leave, I agreed only if the board first voted to add non-relative members to make it legal. Narcissistic leaders hate real accountability. They want the appearance of it without any challenge to their decisions.

Most leaders, including myself, hate being questioned. The difference is how we respond. Narcissistic leaders shift blame, assassinate character, gaslight, threaten, or diminish others. Healthy leaders consider fair questions and research them in the pursuit of truth—even if the criticism hurts.

Getting back to the conversation I started with earlier—I told my friends, fresh off their own bad experience, that the strange thing about narcissistic abuse is you can’t see it clearly while immersed in it. They agreed wholeheartedly… you feel the effects but don’t trust your view because you’ve been conditioned to think less of yourself than the boss, supervisor, or pastor. Only after stepping away—leaving and experiencing healthy relationships—does one see the undercurrent.

This applies to abusive marriages too. I’ve seen both men and women act out as narcissistic abusers. Tactics differ, but the result is the same: the partner is decimated, constantly feeling they can’t do better. It’s not a relationship but a hierarchy—and that’s part of the problem.

How one views leadership—whether in marriage, business, or church—greatly impacts those they lead. In contrast to Jesus’ teaching, a narcissist sees authority as superiority. They gain trust then manipulate outcomes to fit their view of morality or desired results. Jesus, however, rebuked how His disciples argued over who would be greatest, saying: “the greatest among you will be the servant of all.”

A religious narcissist is one of the most dangerous versions of abusive leaders—largely because they drive so many into deconstruction, which is why the apostle Paul warned of them in 1 Timothy 6:

“If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing… imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.”

The apostles and early church fathers repeatedly warned against false teachers, so it should not surprise us that today there are also fraudulent or abusive leaders.

As for myself, I regret not teaching my children how to recognize abusive leaders—in large part because I hadn’t learned to recognize them myself yet. I was stuck in Matthew 18 thinking without grasping God’s passion against deception. I wish the Church was a place where narcissism went to die. This is why I’m writing this whole “When Respected Leaders Fail” series—to open eyes to biblical truth and help people find real truth in the stress of being destroyed by an abuser’s lies.

Of course today, “narcissist” is thrown around too much. Real ones are adept at hiding behind a glossy, curated image of holiness while they accuse others of what they do themselves.

Identifying Narcissistic Leaders

How do we teach believers to set healthy boundaries and recognize abusive leaders faster? As Paul said in 2 Timothy 3, “Avoid such people.”

Here are 4 signs of strong potential for a narcissistic leader:

1. Obsessed with self-image, constant boasting on social media (2 Tim 3:2).

2. Arrogant, abusive toward critics, emotionally cold (2 Tim 3:2-3).

3. Conceited entitlement driving reckless power grabs (Prov 21:24).

4. Projects false morality or “vision” while lacking integrity (2 Tim 3:5).

If these traits show, protect yourself.

• In marriage, seek qualified counseling. Read Boundaries by Henry Cloud and When Narcissism Comes to Church by Chuck DeGroat. Know what’s yours and what isn’t. Abuse is never okay—get out.

• As an employee, update your résumé and build a support network while finding an exit plan.

• In a church with an abusive or condescending pastor, LEAVE. A small praying group is better than a narcissistic abuser’s domain. As Paul said, “mark and avoid.”

Ultimately, a narcissistic abuser keeps you fragile and anxious to maintain power. In order to shift to a healthier state, our self-view must shift from their opinion of you to the truth. I suggest journaling your prayers and researching your questions instead of blindly accepting what you’re told. Press in to understand God’s perspective on abuse and abusive leaders. Spend time learning about yourself—through counselling, Scripture, and prayer you will begin to see what you own and what has been placed on you unfairly.

If Christians can learn to recognize narcissism and avoid abusive people, exposing false teaching, and embracing Jesus’ servant leadership, the Church can become where narcissism goes to die instead of where it thrives.