Years ago, while doing research for a sermon series on patience, I stumbled across a chapter in Romano Guardini’s, Learning the Virtues, that radically changed my perspective on everything – God, self, life. Prior to reading Guardini’s chapter on the virtue of patience I reluctantly read the preceding chapter titled Acceptance. (With rare exception I usually feel obligated to read an entire book, even if I’m only interested in a small part of it.) I was not expecting much from the chapter. I merely wanted to get through it in order to get to the chapter on patience. Acceptance did not strike me as a virtuous quality. In fact, it did not strike me as a virtue at all.

What I read in Guardini’s chapter on acceptance absolutely floored me. Guardini proved that acceptance is not only a virtue; he proved its necessity to real spiritual growth. He demonstrated that acceptance is ultimately a form of patience – patience with God, self, and circumstances. Ultimately, acceptance is an expression of love; for love is patient, and one expression of patience is acceptance.

Acceptance and Three Biblical Themes

Acceptance proves to be a virtue because of its relationship to three biblical themes: (1) God’s providence; (2) Our sinful proneness to self-deception; and (3) the Spirit’s transforming work in our lives.

God’s providence. The sacred scriptures teach that God is active within his creation, sustaining, ordering, and directing it toward the fulfillment of his own divine will (e.g. Romans 8:28; Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:17b). God’s purposeful engagement with all reality is labeled by theologians as “providence”.

Providence includes all things — great and small. Although we often limit God’s providential workings to extraordinarily good events, in reality, no one event – no matter how great – is more “providential” than any other. God provides at all times and through various means. Certainly, God provides in supernatural ways at times, but more often than not, God provides in and through the routine, mundane, and common.

Providence includes all things — good and bad. Providence is not about God keeping bad things from happening to you. Providence is also about God using bad things as a means to your ultimate good: conformity into the image of Christ. Suffering, trials, and difficulties are just as capable of promoting christlikeness as ease, comfort, and security. Augustine was right: “God would never permit evil, if He could not bring good out of evil.”

“Divine providence is a conspiracy of accidents.”[1] God is the chief actor in a “good conspiracy.” God uses all the seemingly random events of your life as a means to bring about your ultimate good. How this is worked out is mind-numbingly mysterious. It is far beyond our ability to fully fathom. Think about it: God is using everything – absolutely everything – in his divine conspiracy. Our minds are simply too small to connect all the dots or put together all the pieces. God knows what he is doing even when we do not.

Although God’s providence is comforting, it is also the source of great confusion. We simply do not understand exactly how all things work together for good. The extent of God’s providence is so vast that we can never fully comprehend God’s purposes in His particular providences toward us.[2] The most accurate answer to the question: “Why has God allowed this?” must always be prefaced by: “I cannot pretend fully to know… but here’s my best guess.”

Our sinful propensities. One tragic consequence of sin is our proneness to self-deception. We can willingly hear the truth and still refuse to allow it to sink into our souls and impact our lives (e.g., James 1:22-26). We possess the amazing ability to selectively deal with reality in order to make it more pleasing or manageable. In the process, we neglect the whole truth about ourselves, our lives, and our world. Unless we are willing to face the truth – to see ourselves and our situation as they really are – we cannot truly change. The person or situation we attempt to change will be nothing more than a creation of our own devices – an illusion, a projection, a wishful fantasy. We will make no real contact with who we really are or the situation in which we really find ourselves.

In order to experience authentic personal transformation we must correctly assess our current situation. We cannot begin where we think we are or where we would like to be. Only a sober assessment of ourselves and our situation will allow us to make any real and lasting changes. And we cannot make this assessment unless we first gratefully accept who we are and where we are. The problem can be reduced to this: Because of our inability to face reality complicated by our proneness to self-deception, we rarely ever accept things as they are. Instead, we create illusions concerning ourselves and our situation. Because of this we are unable to make any real progress in virtue.

Think for a moment: How many of us truly and gratefully accept reality as it is? Isn’t it more likely that we try to deny, suppress, mask, or distract ourselves from our self and situation? T. S. Elliot was right: we cannot handle too much reality – and that includes the reality of ourselves, our situation, and our social relationships. We often live in a dream world rather than in the reality. It is safer, nicer, and easier in our fantasies. Tragically, oftentimes our religion is merely an extension of this dream world. The one thing that is supposed to nurture in us a connection with reality – the real God, the real world, the real us – is sometimes used to deny reality. Using the words of Thomas Merton, David Benner warns us of this poisoned use of religion. “Thomas Merton warns, ‘There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with reality.’ The truly spiritual life is not an escape from reality but a total commitment to it.”[3]

The Spirit’s transforming work. God calls us to a life of contentment, gratitude, and peace. Paul learned to be content in all circumstances (Phil. 4:11-13). He calls us to do the same. For this reason, he gave the following all-encompassing commands: “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16-18). A Spirit-filled life of peace will certainly involve grateful acceptance of all God’s providential gifts.

Defining the Virtue of Acceptance

What is the virtue of acceptance? Oftentimes it is easier to focus on the definition of something by immediately stating what it is not. Acceptance is not:

• Denial. Acceptance seeks to embrace reality, not suppress, deny, or reject it.
• Self-sufficient detachment. Acceptance is a virtue. As such, it is a loving quality. Detachment is not an expression of love.
• Stoic resignation or indifference. Acceptance is a virtue. As such, it is grateful. It is not mere resignation to fate nor is it indifference to reality.
• Partial. We cannot pick and select the items we will accept. Selective acceptance is simply another form of denial. We must accept the whole of our self, situation and others. “This does not mean that we approve of everything and leave everything unchanged. Certainly not. I can and should work on myself and my life and mold and improve it. First, however, I must admit the existing facts; otherwise everything becomes false.”[4]
• Approval. There are many things we must accept that we certainly do not approve of – in ourselves, situations, and society. However, we cannot really go about changing anything until we are willing to accept reality as it currently presents itself to us. “Acceptance does not imply endorsement of inappropriate or wrong behavior. It simply refers to a state of mind that allows you to be peaceful and know the difference between things you can help improve and things that are the way they are.”[5]

What, then, is the virtue of acceptance? Acceptance is the grateful embrace of self, situation, and others. It accepts things as they currently are without attempting to deny their full reality. Acceptance is not selective. It gratefully receives all God’s gifts – surprise packages as well as desired gifts. Ultimately, acceptance embraces everything as gift. “Everything is gratuitous, everything is gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is the measure of our gratefulness… We have not made it, earned it, or deserved it.”[6]

Acceptance is not stoically detached or indifferent. It involves gratitude and receptivity. Even more, it is an act of loving faith. It demonstrates the deepest trust possible. To receive a gift from another implies trust.

God has a way of putting time bombs into pretty packages. We know that from past experience, and now we get another one of those surprise gifts. To be there to say “thank you” and mean it does take courage. It is as if you were saying: “Watch it! This might be another one of those whoppers. It might blow me to pieces. But even if it does, I trust that this is just what I need right now.”[7]

The circle of gratefulness is not complete until the Giver of the gift becomes the Receiver of thanksgiving. We know we have fully accepted self, situation, and society when we can truly give thanks for each of these things.

Three Major Areas of Acceptance

Having underscored the importance of acceptance, we now consider the three main areas of life in which we must learn the virtue of acceptance: self, situation, and society.

Self. Learning to accept one’s self is one of the most difficult tasks we will ever accomplish.

We must learn to gratefully accept our own unique personality, strengths, and skills. Though great insight may come from studying one’s unique temperament using a personality assessment tool, the limitations of such systems are obvious. It is impossible to contain the diversity of human personality in six, sixteen, or six hundred categories. We are all so unique.

Forgive me if I sound too much like Mr. Rogers here, but it is true: There is no one like you. You are special and irreplaceable in God’s eyes. There are things only you can do, perspectives only you can provide, gifts only you can offer. All of these things are wrapped up in your own unique personality and abilities. Learning to accept, treasure, and even love who you are is difficult. However, this is what God does. God loves you. God treasures, cherishes, adores, and desires you. You are unique to God, and uniquely loved by God.

Even though we often mentally assent to this, we find it difficult to gratefully accept who we are because of our faults, weaknesses, and limitations. We are easily disgusted with ourselves. We often protest against our individual makeup. We take our strengths for granted and despise our weaknesses. But acceptance is not selective. We must learn to accept our own inadequacies as well as our strengths. If we do not, we will either fail to accept ourselves fully, or we will hide our true condition from ourselves through lies.

If we cannot bear being with ourselves, how is it that we ask another to do that for us? In fact, the capacity to be with ourselves, as we really are, finite, imperfect, and deeply flawed, will prove not only to be the ‘cure’ for loneliness but our secret gift to others as well.[8]

One final aspect of acceptance of self is the grateful embrace of our existence. As simple and obvious as this sounds, during difficult periods or times of failure our existence becomes a burden rather than a gift. We did not ask to exist. We had no choice in the matter. Yet, here we are! We must continually remind ourselves that existence itself is a gift. We do not ultimately sustain ourselves.

Situation. We must gratefully accept our current lot in life. We do this because we truly believe that God is active in providence. We learn to accept what life brings – great or small, good or bad, joyous or painful. We can do so gratefully because we are confident that God can use all things to produce christlikeness in us – our greatest good! God is not limited to only using “good things” to produce good ends. We must learn that God is not safe, but God is good! There is no ultimate security from dangers – not even in faith in God!

Many times our pride gets in the way of gratefully accepting our lot in life. We think we deserve more. In my former pastorate, preaching to 3000 people and being on the receiving end of a steady stream of praise and accolades could easily delude me into thinking that I was better – more spiritual, more important – than the average pew-sitter. At times, it would be hard for me to reconcile preaching before thousands and changing diapers and cleaning the filth from bathrooms. I would get very frustrated. I would think to myself, “I shouldn’t have to clean bathrooms. I’m a preacher!” Thankfully, God gave me a good slap on the head and brought me down to size. Now, instead of thinking, “Who am I to be cleaning bathrooms?” I think, “Who am I to think I’m better than this? Who am I to think I’m too important to help around the house? And, truly, what greater work could someone do than to change a diaper and clean a bathroom? These are necessary and good things. Thank you God for the strength to serve.” God in Christ became a servant for the world. Do I deserve any better?

We must not only learn to gratefully accept our lot in life. We must also gratefully accept the consequences of our decisions – especially our bad decisions. God does not leave us when we make bad decisions. Contrary to popular perception, there is no fork-in-the-road where God decides to leave us if we go down the wrong path. God does not forsake us when we sin. God grieves; but God does not leave. Instead, God desires that we call our bad decisions what they really are – sin – and own them as our own, and then confess, repent, and seek His face. In other words, we cannot possibly experience real change and true transformation unless we accept our present circumstances as divinely ordained.

Society. We must not only accept self and situation, we must also learn to accept society. We begin by learning to gratefully accept the wide variety of “others” that God has providentially placed in our lives. God has placed all the people in your life – all of them – for a purpose (even the irritating and weird ones). For those who believe in providence there is ultimately no “chance” encounter. We will never know the full possibilities of our relationship with others unless we commit to accepting them as they are.

It can be very difficult to be bound to a person whom one gradually comes to know intimately: how he speaks, how he thinks, and what his attitude toward everything is. One would like to put him away and take another. Faithfulness here is pre-eminently patience with what he is, how he is and acts, and what he does. If this patience is not exercised, everything goes to pieces and the possibilities that lay in the relationships are lost.[9]

We must also accept our cultural setting. Many people harbor a secret wish to have lived in a different time or a different culture. Note the ways Christians romanticize foreign cultures – especially in regard to mission endeavors – and trash American culture. Accepting society involves learning to live in America in the 21^st Century. Instead of constantly complaining about it, get used to it. No culture is perfect. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. If we believe in God’s providence, we must accept our existence at this time, in this place, in this culture.

One final aspect of society we must learn to accept is our local church community. Next time you are in church, look around, and tell yourself: “These are the people God has given me.” God wants you to gratefully accept the odd assortment of individuals that make up your local church. Unless you learn to love this assortment of mixed nuts, you will fail to love the even greater assortment of mixed nuts in the world. “Anyone can love the ideal church. The challenge is to love the real church.”[10] Until you fully accept them, you are not loving real people; you are simply loving illusions, fantasies, extensions of your ego, rather than real, living, flawed, but beautiful people.

Significance

Acceptance is not an easy virtue to acquire. It demands real effort. It involves an intricate weave of qualities. It is a virtue that…

• requires repentance from self-deception and the idol of control
• calls for courage to surrender our lives to God and trust in the wisdom of his providence
• demands Spirit-given strength to exercise patience when self, situation, or society does not meet our expectations
• requires discernment concerning when to merely accept and when to attempt to change. This is the wisdom expressed in Reinhold Neibuhr’s well-known prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

True acceptance is a courageous, risky act of faith. It is an active act of surrender to God’s good purposes as represented by his providential dealings.

Acceptance begins with accepting that the goal of life is not comfort but christlikeness. It demands that we understand that God uses all things – good, bad, and mixed – to conform us to the image of Christ. It is for this reason that Rich Mullins wrote, “Don’t resist the work of God by asking for an easy life.”[11]

After breaking up with his fiancé with whom he had had a 10-year relationship, Mullins wrote,

I realized that sometimes God has better things in mind or something different in mind for us than what we have in mind for ourselves. The long and short of all of it is that if I believe that God is good, then I need to accept whatever happens to me in life as being a gift, and allow Him to take some of the things that hurt, allow Him to take some of the things that sting, some of the things that I think are going to kill me –allow Him to take those things and make of me the person He wants me to be. It may not be the person I want to be, but it’ll be the person He would want me to be.[12]

Toward the end of his life, Mullins confessed, “Right now I cannot imagine that life could be happier married than it is single, so I’m not in a panic about getting married. And I think, you know, maybe God wanted me to be celibate and the way that He accomplished that was to break my heart. So that’s the way it goes.”[13]

It was not easy for Mullins to gratefully accept God’s providence. He did not pretend to know exactly what God was doing in his life, but he was confident that God was working in and through his experiences for his ultimate good. He was willing to accept that God used both the good and bad experiences of life to transform him. He resigned himself to gratefully accept what God brings, whether he completely understood it or not.

Mullins example teaches us to ask ourselves: Do we really want God’s will or our own will? Can we pray with Jesus, “Not my will but Thine be done”? Do we really believe that we can experience deep love for God and others without any wounds? Have we come to accept that, if we are truly following Christ, there can be no christlikeness without suffering, no reward without risk, no glory without a cross?

We must learn to accept pain, suffering, and risks (and their consequences – good or bad) in order to achieve our greatest goal—communion with God through christlikeness. Ultimately, acceptance is no more than embracing this: “Deny yourself, take up your cross [in other words, gratefully receive it], and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).

True acceptance is not approval but it is the only starting point for real transformation. Unless we gratefully accept our self, situation, and society, we cannot truly experience change. We will be changing an illusion – an entity that does not exist, a phantom – rather than reality. Jones is right: “nothing is changed unless it is first accepted.”[14] Though we must not always approve what we accept, unless we begin with accepting ourselves and reality as it currently is, we have no basis upon which to change.

“Self-transformation is always preceded by self-acceptance. And the self that you must accept is the self that you actually and truly are – before you start your self-improvement projects!... Reality must be embraced before it can be changed...  If God loves and accepts you as a sinner, how can you do less?”[15]

It takes great wisdom to know the difference between things we can change and things we cannot change. Most of our frustrations in life arise from our unwillingness to accept the things we should change and our futile attempts to change the things we should accept. We harm ourselves and others when we fail to possess the wisdom to know the difference. For this reason, we must constantly pray for greater measures of the virtue of acceptance.

The Serenity Prayer (Reinhold Neibuhr, 1926)

GOD,
Grant me the serenity to
Accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen. 

Personal Application Questions

1. Which category (self, situation, or society) holds the most frustrations for you in regard to learning the virtue of acceptance? Why?
2. If you could change one thing about yourself, your circumstances, or your relationships, what would it be? Why? Does your choice fit into the category of “things I cannot change” or “things I can change”? If the first, what steps can you take to accept it? If the second, what steps can you take to muster the courage to change it?
3. Consider the three main sections of the Serenity Prayer. Does any part of the prayer resonate with your life at this time? Which part and why?

© Richard J. Vincent, 2005

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