Last October, I started writing the words that follow this paragraph. And while part of me wants to tinker with editing them more, another part of me is more eager to share them and hear what you think. We’ll be chatting about autonomy, narcissism, and spiritual harm… fun topics :)
In short, after hearing Hillary McBride talk about human development and spiritual trauma about a year and a half ago, I was struck by her emphasis on how our autonomy is often impacted in systems and spaces with spiritual harm. I had taught university classes on human development, I knew how important autonomy was, I just had never heard someone so clearly spell out the ways this gets complicated in faith spaces.
This stuck out to me because this word, autonomy, gets a bad reputation in Christian circles. It’s often viewed as synonymous with selfishness and a desire to reach for being god. So you might be thinking right now, as I have in the past, Isn’t autonomy bad? Why should Christians be concerned with the development of autonomy being harmed or hindered?
And before I answer that question, I’ll ask what I think is a more helpful one, one that I’ll unpack below: What if the hindrance of autonomy has been the very foundation to shape perfect conditions for many faith communities to develop as narcissistic systems — systems in which individuals are given building blocks of shame that grow narcissism, rather than building blocks of autonomy that grow love and grace?
Let’s dive in…
One of the most well known theories of human development created by Erik Erikson looks at stages we navigate across our entire lifespan, stages that include our holistic growth—things like our biological, psychological, and social formation. In each of these stages, we’re developing our foundation that we will then build on in the next stage. We might build a sturdy foundation that provides helpful scaffolding to continue to grow, or we might have cracks in the foundation that make later stages in life not so steady. As an example, you can think of this as a child with a neglectful parent who doesn’t learn to trust having difficulties in relationships throughout their life.
One of the most foundational stages of development in this model includes a task of navigating between shame and autonomy. In its most simple form, you can think of this as a child who is about two or three years old, starting to pick out the clothing they’d like to wear, learning to use the toilet, or reaching for the kinds of toys they most enjoy playing with. And it’s the elements of control and will that seem most threatening to Christians here — fearful that if we allow ourselves to embrace and assert our own will or control, we’re making at either-or choice, not leaving room to ultimately yield to God’s will.
But what if this either-or mindset that shames autonomy out of us in church spaces is the very thing that grows narcissistic systems?
When a child, or an adult for that matter, receives the message that their autonomy is a bad thing (and even a sinful thing that they deserve to die and go to hell for), autonomy is going to become something we do not want to possess. The problem here is that autonomy is not the same thing as sin, and if we continue to equate these concepts with each other, we’re only continuing to create headaches for ourselves.
God created us as autonomous beings with free will, a will that was originally created in God’s very image and likeness. And while we can absolutely reach for harmful things with our free will, let’s take a deep breath and remember that few things in life are either-or, and black-and-white thinking often causes us to miss the mark on the big picture. Without our autonomy, we would be paralyzed and unable to live our lives. We have to exercise some amount of autonomy whether we like to acknowledge it or not to function. And while this can certainly go sideways, it doesn’t necessarily have to.
In our autonomy, which is not in and of itself sin, we can reach for a safe and beloved family member, someone we embrace for a hug at the end of a long day, delighting in God’s gift of relationship.
In our autonomy, we can offer a hand to hold in a moment of grief or a glimmer of play, a beautiful depiction of God’s love and compassion.
Our autonomy can be the very thing that leads us to care for others around us, bearing God’s image on earth, or as theologian Marc Cortez says, being God’s representational presence on earth.
Alright, now that we have that clear, what happens to the child or adult that is then told — implicitly or explicitly— that their autonomy is bad, which often gets intertwined with the message that they are bad?
What I have seen play out in front of me in ministries and churches across several different states and countries, and heard themes of from countless stories in books, podcasts, and blog posts, is a version of the following story:
Once it’s asserted that autonomy is bad, there is no longer room for that person to freely be human — they have to learn to adapt to the rules of the system that they are in that tells them they are bad if their autonomy pokes through. And what tragically happens instead, is that we are left with a family, system, or community where autonomy, which has been shamed rather than fostered to develop, grows sideways.
Instead of learning how we can live out our autonomy in a way that does not harm others and can honor God, and even reflect God’s likeness in us, we learn that we will be shamed if we exercise too much autonomy — unless we’re in leadership of course. And this is precisely the place where I would like to suggest that in stripping people of autonomy, we are creating the perfect conditions for narcissistic traits to develop in a person or a system.
If someone has not been allowed to exercise their autonomy, and have even been told that they are bad if they do, and then all of the sudden are given a position of leadership where they are expected to exercise their autonomy and have access to things like power and control, they are most likely not going to know what how to handle these things in a way that won’t cause them or others harm — they have not been given the necessary developmental experiences to learn how to exercise their autonomy or interact with things like power and control, let alone how to interact with power and control in ways that help others, rather than harm them.
And as I’ve been chewing on this for the last few months, I keep coming back to the same thought: No wonder narcissism is so common in churches— we are literally breeding it by stripping people of their autonomy, clothing them with shame, and then offering them leadership positions where the neglected parts of them inside can run rampant like children who were never lovingly taught how to live out their autonomy without harming others.
Let’s take an example:
A boy learns at a young age that his desires are fully bad, he is bad, and he is supposed to submit to God’s will in all things. He is stripped of any sense of autonomy, and instead wrapped in shame.
He is judged and criticized if he ever seems to want control, including his preferences of what he wears, what he eats, or the kinds of books and games he wants to spend his time with. He is told not to be selfish or self-centered and he learns to ignore what he longs to reach for, doing as he is told by others.
He starts playing guitar in his church’s worship band and receives countless compliments about how gifted he is. After disconnecting and numbing himself from what stirs within, this feels good.
And then one day, he’s asked to be the one leading worship, taking charge of the set list for worship and band practice. This also feels good.
He now has control. He can now assert his autonomy. And the best part — it’s all in a church based setting, one where he is praised for doing a good job in front of the congregation each Sunday.
And then, the parts of him that had never been allowed to desire or reach for anything try to navigate what’s now in front of him.
He now gets to decide who is in or out of the band.
He now gets to choose what music will or will not be played.
He now gets to determine what kind of musical skill will be required to play with him.
He now gets to tell interns what time to show up to set the stage for worship.
He now gets to correct the sound guys when he’s not happy with the speakers.
And because he was warned never to exercise this kind of autonomy at any other point in his life, rather than walking this out on firm developmental building blocks, he walks this out on a foundation of shame.
With shame as his foundation, his hands don’t know how to handle the autonomy with care. Instead, he grasps for control, savoring every last bit of feeling important, valued, and powerful like he’s never had freedom to savor before—feeding starved depths of his being, not realizing this cannot nourish his soul.
And his story does not stand alone.
His story feeds into the story of the intern he yells at, demeaning him as he makes him feel small just as he had been made to feel by a parent and mentor. And then, this intern tries as hard as he can to hold things together until he becomes the leader of his ministry team, and grasps his position of power just as he saw modeled by the worship leader before him.
And on and on it goes.
…
Landing today’s plane…
For today, as I pick up these words that I started to process months ago, the main thing I still want to say is this: maybe what our faith communities need is to be less concerned with stripping people of their autonomy, and more concerned with how we might learn how to hold and live out autonomy freely, apart from shame. Rather than being so fearful of autonomy and shaming this inevitable piece of being human, maybe we could see what it’s like to consider how God might have something for us in our autonomy, something good, something that reflects who God is. And maybe (or as part of me wants to say – clearly!) it’s only in the exercising of our autonomy that we can create beautiful things in and around us… I have so many other thoughts, but for today, I’ll wrap it up here :)
If you’d like to chew on this with me…
I’m curious, how does the word autonomy sit with you?
What are the ways you were encouraged or discouraged from freely exercising your autonomy as a child, teenager, or adult?
How do you see autonomy handled in faith spaces? How do you see this intersect with shame?
In what ways do you see autonomy handled differently between people in leadership, and those not in leadership, in churches, ministries, or other faith systems?
Why do you think faith spaces fear people freely living out their autonomy?
What do you imagine the foundational building blocks would be to cultivate a freedom in exercising one’s autonomy, toward the good and benefit of their own self and others?
Notes:
To hear some of Hillary McBride’s thoughts on development and spiritual trauma, consider listening to Episode 4 (or all!) of the Holy/Hurt podcast sponsored by Sanctuary Mental Health here, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And now that I’m returning to these words nearly a year after first writing them, I can also say, this podcast has been made into a book that you can read!
And of course, for thoughts on narcissism and the church, see Chuck DeGroat’s When Narcissism Comes to Church.
Window from Dunkeld Cathedral in Scotland, August 2025
I grew up as an eldest daughter in a household of shame for reasons beyond me. Of course I breathed in that shame, shame for being female, shame for wanting to excel, shame for having needs, shame for not coping. Shame for not putting others first, shame for not looking after others. Shame for wanting to be included. Shame for not being strong enough to stand up for myself. Shame for being shrewd enough to find a way out.
I married a man who lives in his autonomy with generosity and grace, refused to respond to my invitation to control me and stayed faithful to all he saw in me that I couldn’t and wouldn’t see for myself.
The most mind transforming teaching came to me as a surprise through Philippians 2 …
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped
I believe that true honour of our selves and from it the practice of autonomy is to count ourselves equal - equal to one another across everything that would divide- then loving one another IS equal to loving ourselves not MORE than loving ourselves. To listen to another is learned and honed as a skill through listening to ourselves. Respecting someone else’s point of view is developed through the careful work of considering and reflecting on what our own view is.
And our bodies… probably the battlefield of the greatest harm of autonomy in my opinion. They are our kingdom to learn the skills of any other kingdom we may be given to reign over.