Home >> History, Ideology & Science >> Religion

     Email   Print 

REVIEW Thieves: One Dirty TV Pastor and the Man Who Robbed Him

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 8/18/2011

TITLE: Thieves: One Dirty TV Pastor and the Man Who Robbed Him (Denver, Trey Smith Books, 2011)

AUTHOR: Trey Smith

REVIEW by: Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"

The story unfolded in "Thieves" is so implausible that the author dedicates its first 2 pages to reassuring us that, essentially, it is true. The tale is presented as a "nonfiction narrative" (what used to be called "roman-a-clef".) None of the characters in it comes as a surprise: the scumbag televangelist and his dissolute son; the loser protagonist who almost robbed them; and the assortment of sleazy, untoward characters on both sides of the law that populate this tome.

Indeed, with the exception of the storyteller, everyone comes across as a 2-dimensional cardboard cutout, or a caricature. In other books, this may be a disadvantage - here it only serves to accentuate the book's message. The plot is cleverly convoluted and satisfyingly contrived with surprises no end, and twists and turns sufficient for all of Grisham's output.

But what makes this ostensible potboiler truly stand out is the prose: crisp, brutal, wit-noirish, hopeless, desperate even. Trey Smith is a new Raymond Chandler, with a vivid Bogart in mind. "Thieves" is a throwback to another period of tortuous and torturous moral dilemmas, the hero's odyssey as a quest-cum-earthly-purgatory, and a background of all-pervasive, constant, steamy drugs-sex-crime.

The book is consists of a humongous flashback following the robbery of the TV pastor. This allows Smith to introduce us to the nexus and confluence of commercial, televised and irredeemably corrupt Christianity, crime, and hedonism.

In intricate detail, we are taken on a guided tour of the mechanics and dynamics of megachurches and ministries, their henchmen and staff, and their illicit liaisons with dope dealers, pimps, and worse. The author found himself at the crux of these machinations almost by accident and keeps marveling at everything he witnesses and does (or, more rarely, is compelled to do.) It is this fresh, childlike wonder; this reflexive, cruel, self-defeating honesty; this almost-compulsive attention to detail, tone, and scent that transform this book into the verbal equivalent of a top-notch documentary film, a confession, a profound morality play, more religious than any tract or pamphlet.

The book raises the important issue of religiosity: the abuse of religion by psychopathic narcissists, such as Dr. Mike Murdoch, the TV preacher whose tenebrous figure dominates the story.
God is everything the narcissist ever wants to be: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, admired, much discussed, and awe inspiring. God is the narcissist's wet dream, his ultimate grandiose fantasy. But God comes handy in other ways as well.

The narcissist alternately idealizes and devalues figures of authority.

In the idealization phase, he strives to emulate them, he admires them, imitate them (often ludicrously), and defends them. They cannot go wrong, or be wrong. The narcissist regards them as bigger than life, infallible, perfect, whole, and brilliant. But as the narcissist's unrealistic and inflated expectations are inevitably frustrated, he begins to devalue his former idols.

Now they are "human" (to the narcissist, a derogatory term). They are small, fragile, error-prone, pusillanimous, mean, dumb, and mediocre. The narcissist goes through the same cycle in his relationship with God, the quintessential authority figure.

But often, even when disillusionment and iconoclastic despair have set in - the narcissist continues to pretend to love God and follow Him. The narcissist maintains this deception because his continued proximity to God confers on him authority. Priests, leaders of the congregation, preachers, evangelists, cultists, politicians, intellectuals - all derive authority from their allegedly privileged relationship with God.

Religious authority allows the narcissist to indulge his sadistic urges and to exercise his misogynism freely and openly. Such a narcissist is likely to taunt and torment his followers, hector and chastise them, humiliate and berate them, abuse them spiritually, or even sexually. The narcissist whose source of authority is religious is looking for obedient and unquestioning slaves upon whom to exercise his capricious and wicked mastery. The narcissist transforms even the most innocuous and pure religious sentiments into a cultish ritual and a virulent hierarchy. He preys on the gullible. His flock become his hostages.

Religious authority also secures the narcissist's Narcissistic Supply. His coreligionists, members of his congregation, his parish, his constituency, his audience - are transformed into loyal and stable Sources of Narcissistic Supply. They obey his commands, heed his admonitions, follow his creed, admire his personality, applaud his personal traits, satisfy his needs (sometimes even his carnal desires), revere and idolize him.

Moreover, being a part of a "bigger thing" is very gratifying narcissistically. Being a particle of God, being immersed in His grandeur, experiencing His power and blessings first hand, communing with him - are all Sources of unending Narcissistic Supply. The narcissist becomes God by observing His commandments, following His instructions, loving Him, obeying Him, succumbing to Him, merging with Him, communicating with Him - or even by defying him (the bigger the narcissist's enemy - the more grandiosely important the narcissist feels).

Like everything else in the narcissist's life, he mutates God into a kind of inverted narcissist. God becomes his dominant Source of Supply. He forms a personal relationship with this overwhelming and overpowering entity - in order to overwhelm and overpower others. He becomes God vicariously, by the proxy of his relationship with Him. He idealizes God, then devalues Him, then abuses Him. This is the classic narcissistic pattern and even God himself cannot escape it.