Is My God a Narcissist?

By Parambrahma Tripathy

The thought that God might be a narcissist jolts us awake in a way few theological questions can. It sounds outrageous at first, almost childish in its audacity, as if we’re accusing our own parent of secretly harbouring a vindictive streak. Yet the suspicion lingers in quiet corners of the mind, surfacing late at night when sermons fall silent and prayers echo back unanswered. If God is truly perfect, why does He, She, or It need so much validation? Why do so many religions seem built around pleasing a divine ego that punishes, rewards, and keeps score like an insecure monarch?

‘God is watching’

From childhood, many of us are taught to bow our heads, fold our hands, and submit to an invisible perfection. “God is watching,” elders whisper, not always with comfort but with warning. There’s a sense that He keeps a ledger, marking down transgressions with the fastidiousness of an accountant who can never afford to overlook a single missing coin. And this ledger—this cosmic account book—often reads more like the diary of a possessive lover than the open arms of unconditional love we so often speak of in hushed, reverent tones.

Consider the first commandment given to Moses, the stern declaration: You shall have no other gods before me. Not a suggestion. Not gentle encouragement. But a divine ultimatum. In any other context, this level of exclusivity would feel suffocating. If a partner demanded you never so much as look at another, we’d caution you to run. Yet in the context of faith, we kneel deeper, fearing retribution more than questioning motive. The irony is that so much of this worship is framed as love—when sometimes it feels closer to fear disguised as devotion.

Fear, after all, is a powerful adhesive. The flood that drowned the world, the fire that consumed cities like Sodom and Gomorrah—these stories live on, not just as lessons in morality but as chilling reminders that stepping out of line has consequences. A child reading Genesis might wonder: did an entire world really deserve to be wiped clean? Is the heart of God so easily bruised by disobedience that He must press reset on creation? Or is this how humans explain away the chaos of nature—storms and floods and quakes—by blaming our failings for divine rage?

It is here, in the punishment of dissent, that the shadow of narcissism grows longest. A narcissist cannot bear to be contradicted. Challenge their authority, and they will bend heaven and earth to remind you who holds the power. How different is this from a God who, according to the Book of Job, permits unimaginable suffering merely to win a bet with Satan? Poor Job, faithful to a fault, reduced to a pawn in an argument between cosmic egos. If we saw this behaviour in a parent, we’d call it emotional abuse. Yet, in our stories of the divine, it becomes a testament to faith.

Not loud rebellion, but weary sigh

Perhaps this is why so many people quietly drift from religion, not with a loud rebellion but a weary sigh. They read the same scriptures, yet the words grow heavier with each retelling. They look for warmth, but find rules. They search for mercy, but stumble into endless tests. For some, faith remains a sanctuary; for others, it becomes an uneasy contract: obey and be rewarded, disobey and be punished. Heaven or hell. Eternity wrapped around the thin thread of compliance.

But maybe we are reading these stories too literally. Maybe the narcissism is not in God but in us. After all, what are scriptures if not human attempts to explain the inexplicable? The universe is vast, chaotic, beautiful, terrifying. To give it shape, our ancestors told stories—stories that gave thunder a name, storms a reason, and suffering a purpose. They shaped gods in their own image, with tempers, desires, flaws, and pride. They projected onto the divine what they feared most in themselves: the unquenchable thirst for control, the hunger for admiration, the terror of being insignificant.

This projection explains why so many deities across cultures share similar traits—jealousy, rage, vanity, vengeance. The Greeks carved their gods from the same clay as their kings and poets: flawed, passionate, quick to punish insult. Yahweh’s thunder echoes Zeus’s lightning. Krishna’s playful pride dances not so differently from the mischievousness of Loki. Even in Eastern philosophies that deny a single anthropomorphic God, like Buddhism, there lurks an idea of a cosmic balance sheet—karma—that suggests the universe itself has a personality, a sense of moral bookkeeping that never forgets.

Our relationships with God mimics…

Is this moral order a comfort or another mask of divine ego? A loving universe might forgive mistakes without demanding penance. Yet karma insists every debt must be paid, every slight must be balanced. It is not hard to see this cosmic justice as another expression of the human need for fairness—a fairness that does not always exist in nature but which our minds crave to make sense of tragedy.

In a way, these ideas offer a mirror more than a window. When we wonder if God is a narcissist, we are really asking how much of ourselves we see reflected in the divine. Our relationships with God, however intimate or distant, often mimic our relationships with authority—parents, teachers, leaders. If we grew up with love that came with conditions, we learn to expect the same from heaven. If we were taught that obedience is virtue, then rebellion feels like sin, even when it is merely a question: Why must I bow my head when I could stand tall and speak?

Of course, not everyone finds narcissism in the sacred. Many discover in their faith an infinite well of compassion that asks nothing but honesty, that shelters the broken without strings attached. There are traditions that paint God not as a king on a throne but as a friend beside us, a mother’s embrace, a lover’s gaze. For every angry commandment, there are whispered assurances: You are loved. You are enough. You do not need to earn what is freely given. These glimpses of a softer divinity remind us that what we call God often says more about what we hope for than what we fear.

So, is God a narcissist? Or are we the narcissists for believing the creator of a billion galaxies needs our praise to feel whole? The more you sit with the question, the more it unravels. Maybe it is not about whether God has an ego but whether we do—an ego so fragile that it must be reassured that suffering has meaning, that obedience buys protection, that existence itself revolves around human actions and choices.

Our best hope is to keep asking…

Perhaps the divine ego is not divine at all but the echo of our own anxieties, shaped into commandments and scriptures and rituals meant to keep the darkness at bay. And maybe—just maybe—true faith begins where the ego ends: when we kneel not out of fear of punishment but out of wonder; when worship is not payment for paradise but a song sung to the vastness, with no expectation of reward.

If God is indeed perfect, then perfection needs nothing from us—not our fear, not our praise, not our desperate bargaining. And if God still loves us despite our small rebellions, then maybe the lesson hidden in the paradox is that the divine cannot be trapped inside human flaws. Our best hope, then, is to keep asking, keep doubting, keep stripping away the layers of projection until what remains is not a narcissist but something vaster than ego: a love we cannot quite name but feel in moments of grace when no one is watching.

In the end, perhaps the question is not whether God is a narcissist but whether we can let go of our own.

[Parambrahma Tripathy is an author and Communication for Development professional with over 18 years of experience. He has worked with organizations like BBC Media Action, Landesa, The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, IPE Global, and Coceptual Media. He has been recognized with several awards, including the prestigious Laadli Media and Gender Sensitivity Award in 2022 and 2023, Best Lyricist of the Year in 2022, Dr. Radhanath Rath Fellowship for Journalism, Kalinga Literary Youth Award, Timepass Bestseller Award, Srujan India Youth Award, Utkal Sahitya Samaj Felicitation and Odia Yuva Stambha Samman(2023)]

(DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own and have nothing to do with OTV’s charter or views. OTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)