“Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, will to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other”
This is a personal philosophy developed over the last 7-8 years.
Tightly coupled with my own faith story
This is not a theological document but rather something that started off as a simple thought that evolved throughout my faith journey. I was fortunate enough to be born into a family of faith and be surrounded by many people who practiced it with conviction. However, I started exploring the true meaning and beauty of my Catholic faith only around 2016. Prior to that, while I still believed in Jesus and most of the Catholic theology, I was still in a great level of disagreement with a lot of the church teachings.
My own personal journey of acceptance started around 2016 after I realized why the catechism speaks of certain things in certain ways. I started to understand why the church allows certain things, enables certain things, encourages certain things, and at the same time, prohibit certain things.
Why was this realization so important to me around that year? It was important to me because it helped me understand that the teachings of the church were true even when I did not comprehend them. They were true even when I disagreed with them. The only difference between the period before and after that realization was the fact that my heart was suddenly free of a thousand conflicts that it was fighting within. On one hand, there was this strong urge to accept Christ but on the other hand I wanted to follow my own version of faith that suited me the best. I was not accepting my call to obedience and did not accept the teachings of the church that hold true irrespective of time and irrespective of my understanding.
Eventually, I realized that not accepting something that was true, something that could not and should not be changed, caused a lot of turmoil in my heart. When I started to accept that reality, there was peace in my heart. I wondered if there were other things in my life that caused frustration in my heart simply because I was not ready to accept a reality. I wondered if I was causing myself pain simply by trying to control things that I was not supposed to control in my life. I wondered if there were other things that God allowed in my life that I was unwilling to accept.
I wondered if there were God given crosses in my life that I found too heavy to carry.
This talk is about the connection between our – despair, hopelessness, frustration, unhappiness, and inevitably the lack of peace in our heart – to our unwillingness to accept the circumstances that God allows in our lives.
Areas in life that requires acceptance
As I started to explore areas in life where I remained too stubborn to accept a reality, I figured that one can apply the “Acceptance philosophy” to pretty much all aspects of our lives. The logic is quite simple: there is something that frustrates me because it is not the way I want it to be, I try to fix/change it, it doesn’t work, it continues to frustrate me. I mean, just think about it; you are at a movie theatre to watch film that your friend picked. It turns out that the film is not in your taste. Either you can be frustrated in your head by thinking about your excellent taste in films or adopt the acceptance philosophy and consider the fact that the friend wanted to do something together with you. For the interest of time (and our attention span 😉 ), I will try to focus on some core areas.
I thought about making “suffering” the first category but then immediately realized that it is the only category where people will need some help in “accepting” their circumstances. I can’t imagine someone finding it difficult to accept a million dollars jackpot that they accidentally won. So, I started to think about subcategories under suffering.
We will only look at some examples of the areas where we are called to accept some realities that we don’t really appreciate.
Materialistic struggles (finance, job, vocation etc.)
We are in constant struggle to make money, find a fulfilling job, to identify our right vocation. If I am committing most of my time and energy to attaining a materialistic fulfillment and if I don’t succeed; it might mean that God wants me to commit it all elsewhere. Making money and getting rich is in no way bad or evil. If God doesn’t want to make you but someone else rich, you got to accept that as a reality.
God has seen a purpose for my materialistic sufferings.
Health
Health is an area where most people seem to get anxious. People are not willing to accept even the slightest pain in their lives. Everyone is always complaining about a pain here, a pain there, and how miserable their life is. We can all think of a “Pity-party” waling amoung our midst.There might be some areas of health in our lives that is painful to accept. We still have to accept it if that is what God is allowing in our lives.
God has seen a purpose in my health sufferings
Family
We all love our families. I love my family too. I absolutely do. If I were given an option by God to choose a family, I would still choose the one that I was born into without a single exception for any of the immediate and extended family member. I would not ask for any change. However, it doesn’t mean that my family is perfect. It in no way means that it is even halfway close to being perfect. Not even 10%. There have been occasions when I thought to myself: “God, please put me in a different circus. Tired of this one”. And I am not even kidding. There might be at least one or two people here that might understand what I am saying. In spite of the frustrations that I might have with my family, I do realize that my family is a gracious blessing that my Father in Heaven gifted me. Some of us might even have childhood wounds inflicted on us by our family. It might be impossible for some of us to even imagine a reconciliation with their family. The acceptance philosophy still encourages to do so.
“True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the degradation, the truth… It is worthwhile, because in the end dealing with the real situation helps to bring real healing.”
– Desmond Tutu, Anglican Bishop
Should I focus on the shortcomings of my family and be bitter about it all my life, or simply accept the fact that this is the family that God decided to put me in? I choose the latter because God has intended a purpose for me in this family. If it is not immediately clear to me, He will reveal what purpose He has for me in this particular family that I was born into. This can also apply to friendship, relationships, and people in our lives
At the job
At least some of us are constantly thinking about climbing the ladder at our career. Celebration for the last promotion probably didn’t last long enough because we are already working towards getting the next one. Some of us even want to be the CEO and probably even believe that we would do a better job at the position. Who are we kidding right?
Do we take a moment to discern whether God wants us to become the CEO? If God wanted me to be a mid level worker at my company, the core of my heart will churn in turmoil if I somehow fought my way up to become CEO. That is not because I am being punished by God but because I don’t have what it takes to be one. It only means that I tried to choose my own cross and it turned out to be heavier than what I could handle.
At Family
Do we want to be someone in our family that doesn’t really suit our identity? Parents might seek and value our sibling’s opinion more than ours, and are we trying for that to change?
At church
Do we want to be the lead singer instead of being just a member of the choir?
Do we want to be the leader of the faith group instead of being just a member?
In the post-modern reality
Do we want to be a woman despite being born a man? Do we want to be a man despite being born a woman? Do we want to deny that God intended a purpose for our sexuality?
Do we want to deny the fact that the previous generation aren’t a bunch of selfish boomers and that we are all standing on their shoulders?
What does it all point at?
If we look closely at the examples, we might come across a problem that is common to all of them.
“In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory” – Ephesians 1: 11-12
The underlying cause behind our hesitance to accept our realities is our ignorance of the fact that God has a purpose for each one of us. He doesn’t want to allow something in our lives that will deviate us from that purpose
- If being rich means deviating from that purpose, God doesn’t want to let that happen
- If being financially stable means deviating that purpose, financial struggles will follow a good Christian throughout his life.
- If God wants to allow diseases in one’s life in order to fulfil their purpose, accept that disease with an open hand and smiling lips because you are being called for the praise of His glory through that disease (Talk about Tomy uncle’s father)
- If your family is getting on to even the last of your nerves, offer them to God and ask Him for the strength. God wants you with them for their redemption and your purification
- If your colleague was chosen over you for a promotion, irrespective of you trying everything you could to be a good employee, understand that God wants you in that position
If you had been trying real hard to change a circumstance in your life with all your ability, and all your devotion, and all your commitment; and if nothing still changes, realize that God is telling you something
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”
– Psalm 139: 23-24
God uses the circumstances of life – relations we cannot fix, questions we cannot answer and problems we cannot solve – to expose the conditions of our hearts.
-Unbound, Neal Lozano
If certain things cannot be changed, let them be. God is working with it. God has a plan.
“This interior reality of each person is frequently concealed behind a great deal of “foliage”, which makes it difficult for us not only to understand ourselves, but even more to know others: “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse, who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). We can understand, then, the advice of the Book of Proverbs: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life; put away from you crooked speech” (4:23-24). Mere appearances, dishonesty and deception harm and pervert the heart. Despite our every attempt to appear as something we are not, our heart is the ultimate judge, not of what we show or hide from others, but of who we truly are. It is the basis for any sound life project; nothing worthwhile can be undertaken apart from the heart. False appearances and untruths ultimately leave us empty-handed.”
– DILEXIT NOS
Acceptance through the eyes of the Scriptures and Catechism
Scripture shows us plenty of examples for people trying to take control of their lives where they ought to give God the control. Scripture also shows us through examples the importance of Acceptance of circumstances that God allows
- Adam & Eve
- Refusal to accept their identity. They wanted to be like God. Tried to take control
- Result: misery and pain
- Cane
- Refusal to accept his calling to offer the best fruit of his work to God. Refusal to accept God’s favour on his brother
- Result: Evil, pain, & misery
- Kings: From Saul, through David, to Solomon
- Took things into their own hands too often, disobeyed God, sinned
- Despite having profound experiences of God in their lives, they rejected the God’s calling very often. Refusal to accept their identity
- Result: God’s wrath on Israel
- People of Israel
- Refusal to accept the Messiah
- Result: we all know how it ended
- Judas Iscariot
- Refused to accept his role, took things into his own hands, he wanted to make more money
- Result: I haven’t felt sorrier for anyone else in the bible than Judas
Have we got only negative examples from the Scripture? Of, course not
- Job
- What an amazing man. At the pinnacle of his suffering, he tells his friends “God gave, and God has taken, May His name be praised”
- Fast forward to the beginning of Christian era
- Mother Mary accepts God’s will and doesn’t get anxious even for a second
- We were all saved because a young woman accepted God’s will 2000 years ago in a middle eastern society with a tribal mindset. Was it only bravery or was there also faith?
How to “accept”?
We might be able to write essays on the need for acceptance and even poetry about its beauty. But how do we bring it to practice? This is where we have the beautiful example of Jesus.
God became man in order to redeem us with His blood. He wasn’t just showing us the powers of divinity but rather what it means to carry that heavy cross and pursue the will of the Father in Heaven as man with flesh and bone and emotions and desires and temptations and pain and suffering.
Jesus was 100% a HUMAN BEING as He was God. What does that mean? He went through all experiences in his life as any other human being just like you and me. He was vulnerable to suffering, vulnerable to temptations, He was vulnerable enough to get stressed out to the point that He asks the heavenly Father to take away the chalice if possible. He was vulnerable enough to be on the verge of giving up on His cross. He went through the extremities of suffering and pain to show mankind that none of us would be given a cross that we wouldn’t be able to carry.
Jesus promises to be by our side when we carry our own crosses, He promises to lend us all a hand with those crosses. Let us not worry about them, let us not be sad about them, let us not abandon them.
As Epistle of James says:
“Consider all trials and temptations as joy, my brothers, …for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance”
– James 1:2
“If God has left a thorn in our flesh” – 2 Corinthians 12:7 . It is only so that we have a reminder of our purpose with us
Let us bloom where we are planted!
Acceptance Vs Resignation
As Christian life demands, we all have to be prudent in our lives. Do not mistake Acceptance with Resignation. Resignation is the state of mind where we believe that everything is fate and there is nothing, we can do about it. The guy who got only one talent is a good example for this. God does not find favor with a person who buries the only talent they have got. They still need to work with it because Jesus says that
“For everyone who has, more will be given, and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
– Matthew 25: 29
We should always strive to change/improve the things that we can change. It becomes a problem only if we dwell on something despite getting signals that it is not really in our control. It leads us to idolizing our problems.
The serenity prayer by protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr should be our discernment motto:
“Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.”
