The Power of Acceptance

   

When was the last time you said something or did something and realized you were imitating your mother or father? We learn so many good things from our parents like our work ethic, how to manage money, and so on. However, we also learn some not so good things from our parents.

Family patterns are real, and many of them are incredibly dysfunctional. We absorb so much from our family origin without even realizing it. The patterns perpetuate dysfunction in the family and future families. The way a family communicates or doesn’t communicate, how they deal with conflict, how they interact and show respect or the lack of it informs how we will be in future relationships.

Jacob’s favoritism toward his wife, Rachel, and her two sons hurt his family and created dysfunction. Despite that flaw, Jacob made great strides in his character growth, but he never entirely grew out of this weakness. However, his sons learned to accept this flaw in their father. They gradually grew to see it as how he was. Their acceptance of their father’s dysfunction brought them together. The son’s acceptance of their father brought them closer to their father. We don’t have to be perfect to have families that love each other; we just have to learn to accept each other and make the changes we can.

It helps us all to admit that we are all dysfunctional in some way or another. What counts is whether or not we are trying to work on our weaknesses. When family members recognize that another member is trying, they accept them with their dysfunction. Acceptance brings transformation to the relationship.

We all want to be acknowledged and need acceptance. When we receive acceptance from those who know us best, something positive happens within us. Acceptance has the power to help us move forward and overcome our dysfunction. Of course, not all together, but we can make progress.

I have long considered that my greatest accomplishment in life is not my academic achievements or my ministerial accomplishments but my family. Nothing adds more meaning to my life than knowing that my marriage to the woman who loves me still endures. Nothing stimulates me more than knowing that my children and grandchildren respect me and follow me.

 

 

A Fatal Attraction

 

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that we are all making choices every day, and those choices are making us better or worse. We are changing “either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.”[i]  No one person makes all the choices correctly. The point is whether we are trying to make good choices and what do we do when we realize we have made a wrong choice. Do we correct it? Making choices based on the principles of God’s Word transforms us into people of the light, as does the wrong choices into people of darkness.

Take, for example, the sin of envy; it is an acceptable sin to many today. I have had conversations with people who will declare they don’t think it’s right that the rich have so much and they have so little. It is one of the forces driving socialism. However, no context justifies envy. Cornelius Plantinga describes the difference between covetousness and envy:

Envy is a nastier sin than mere covetousness. What an envier wants is not, first of all, what another has; what an envier wants is for another not to have. To envy is to resent somebody else’s good so much that one is tempted to destroy it. The coveter has empty hands and wants to fill them with somebody else’s goods. The envier has empty hands, and therefore wants to empty the hands of the envied. Envy, moreover, carries overtones of personal resentment: an envier resents not only somebody else’s blessing but also the one who has been blessed.[ii]

There are numerous examples of envy in the scriptures, and it is always ugly. Cain not only wanted what Able had; he wanted his brother dead. Even when offered a second chance by God, Cain chooses the inevitable consequences of envy, and that is to attack the envied. Take, for example, the envy of Saul. Saul was king and David, his servant, so it makes no sense for Saul to want what David has. This is the insanity of envy. It blinds you to what you have and makes you resentful of the other.

Envy was what drove Joseph’s brothers to their horrific deed of selling their brother into slavery. They cared nothing about owning Joseph’s beautiful coat. They tore it into pieces. What the brothers resented was Joseph having the coat. They resented him and what the coat represented. That was why they stripped him naked and beat him, and tossed him in a pit to die.

Why write about envy? Because it is rearing its ugly head in so many places. Do you want to know the greatest antidote for envy? It is gratitude! Learning to be grateful for what you have and who you are keep envy out of your life. Let’s make choices that make us more like Christ!

 

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[i] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Macmillan Publishing, New York, 1952), p. 86-87.[ii] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 162.