Ego = Sorrow

If I thought it would help, I’d punch their lights out.
It wouldn’t help. When their heads are stuck inside an ego spiral, spinning in solipsism, even a solid whack can’t knock them out of that loop. No one can help anyone else stop living by their ego.
For more than three decades, I’ve been working in pastoral counseling. Of all the various things pastor/preacher types do, I do more of that. You should understand up front that most of the time you don’t make much headway. You can understand all there is to know of human behavior, but there is nothing you can tell someone that will change them. If they don’t want it, it won’t happen.
That assumes you aren’t interested in playing manipulation games. Believe me, gaining converts in that fashion is all too easy. If you think numbers and influence matters, just learn how to do sales pitch. Having experienced something of what monster churches are like, I haven’t seen one of them that doesn’t practice a good bit of salesman’s manipulative psychology. That’s not for me, but it’s the easiest path by far. I know; I tried it once.
There’s a couple of fellows I know about my age who are stuck on ego issues. One acts like a six-year-old when things don’t go as he wants. He inflicts his disappointment on those who love him most, when the problem is he refuses to adjust to reality. The other one is more interested in proving how clever he is than ever being anywhere close to the facts. I know way too many women who prance on the feminist soapbox — pushy, manipulative, sneaky, untrustworthy, etc. Ego knows no gender, but the symptoms of solipsism are easy to predict by sex. The key is they are the first few steps down the path of psychopathy and refuse to come back.
Psychopaths cannot experience empathy; solipsists refuse to try. Oddly, psychopaths can learn to get along in society if they are smart enough. Solipsists keep insist society get along with them. You’ve surely met someone who is so stuck on their own egos, they can’t imagine how anyone could want something they don’t want. They define “common sense” as whatever pleases them; the rest of the world is simply rude and hateful for not thinking like them.
In the process they hurt everyone they encounter. For most of them, at some point the world comes crashing down on them, and they never have a clue what happened. They keep right on going, asserting how everyone treats them so badly. I can’t help them, but maybe I can help the rest of us deal with them.
You can’t use grace on them. They don’t respond to the Spirit of God, at least not well enough to depend on that. You have to treat them strictly according to Laws. It helps if you understand God’s Laws from a Hebrew frame of mind. That way you aren’t caught up in the worst of their follies. You may not be able to get rid of them easily; the Laws apply both ways in that sense. Still, you insulate yourself and your ministry from their foolishness by operating by the expectations of the Laws, not grace.
The clue to change is when they start showing a sensitivity to revelation; they somehow change over some undetermined period of time in ways you can discern when you speak the Word of God to them. When the Ultimate Truth starts to matter, they are on the mend. The other big clue is a measure of empathy. It’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it. People who can feel the pains of others, who can set aside their own ego long enough to recognize the world is not simply a mirror of their souls, we know they are on the mend. They still may not get very far, but those are good signs. They are nothing less than miracles when the change comes.
Everybody serves somebody else; only God is absolute Lord.