Just scroll through social media and see what the world has become—a gallery of faces that never tire of themselves. Every pose, every angle, every caption screams of self-admiration and hunger for validation. Truly, people today are living proof of the biblical prophecy that in the last days, “men shall be lovers of themselves.”
I see it everywhere—the obsession with self-image, the glorification of one’s own story, and the desperate need to be adored. People document every detail of their lives as though the world cannot breathe without knowing what they ate for lunch or where they spent the weekend. Vanity has evolved into an accepted culture, disguised as self-love or self-care.
Yet, at its core, it is the same ancient sin of pride—the worship of one’s own reflection. This is not the healthy confidence that builds character; this is the conceit that blinds the soul.
The prophecy about people becoming lovers of themselves does not merely describe selfies and filtered photos. It speaks of a deeper decay—of hearts that have grown cold to others because they burn too hot for themselves. People have become selective in their compassion, generous only when cameras are rolling, kind only when it earns them recognition. Acts of goodness are now performed not out of conscience, but out of convenience and the promise of attention. Even religion, once the voice of humility, has become a platform for boasting: “Look at how faithful I am.”
I often think that what we now call “personal branding” is simply vanity dressed in corporate attire. People compete not to be better but to be seen as better. In schools, in workplaces, and even in churches, we see individuals striving to outshine one another rather than uplift each other. The desire to be admired, to be envied, to be followed—it has become the new moral compass of this generation. It dictates how people think, dress, speak, and behave. They live not for meaning but for metrics—for likes, shares, and views.
This obsession with self has made people fragile. When the applause stops, so does their sense of worth. They are constantly measuring their lives against others’ highlights, comparing their reality to another’s illusion. The result is emptiness—a silent epidemic of loneliness beneath the bright lights of social media fame. The more people love themselves in this distorted way, the more they hate what they see in the mirror when no one else is watching.
Even relationships have suffered under this self-centered culture. Love has turned transactional—people seek partners who make them feel good, not those they can serve and grow with. The idea of sacrifice, of loving beyond convenience, has become outdated. Many now walk away the moment love stops feeding their ego. The biblical warning was right: when people love themselves above all, genuine love for others cannot survive.
And what about community? It has weakened. People no longer think collectively; they think competitively. The modern age has produced individuals who guard their comfort more than their conscience. They post about justice but rarely act on it. They cry for change but refuse to change themselves. The world has become a noisy marketplace of opinions, where everyone wants to be right, and no one wants to be humble.
I sometimes wonder if the cure to this self-worship lies not in more self-love, but in rediscovering self-forgetfulness. To love others without seeking reward, to give without posting proof, to listen more and speak less—these are the small rebellions against a narcissistic age. Perhaps the only way to prove that prophecy wrong is to live as though it does not define us: to be self-aware but not self-absorbed, confident but not conceited, and human enough to care for others more than the mirror image of ourselves.
