Acceptance vs. Change

So I have a friend with the initials Psy.D by her name.  Most healthy friendships are reciprocal and mutually beneficial.  This one isn’t quite like that.  While I’d like to think that I enrich her life, the truth is I pay her to hang out with me.  And I’ve never regretted a single cent I’ve given her. 

Most recently we’ve been talking about acceptance vs. change. 

In any given interaction, there is a tension between acceptance and change.  There are things you might want to change about yourself or the other person.  There are also things you might want to accept about yourself or the other person.  So you have four options total.  Change you, change me, accept you, accept me.  To complicate matters further, the other person you are interacting with has the same four options.  They can try to change you, change themselves, accept you, or accept themselves. 

It’s really important to know your default setting.  Do you gravitate more toward change or acceptance?  I, maybe like most guys, am on the change end of the spectrum.  And, to be honest, I’m learning this often gets me into trouble.  When my wife Josie is upset about something, for example, I sometimes “skip” acceptance and try to fix her.  Rarely does this work.  In fact, I can’t honestly think of a single time when this ever worked!  It always backfires!  You’d think I’d have this down eight years into marriage, but I am slowly learning that when she is upset, the one thing she needs most is my unconditional and radical acceptance.  Once she senses that, and only when she senses that, will she be open to my suggestions on what to change.  Now men, please note that you can’t pretend here.  Pretending to accept your wife just so that you can more quickly “fix” her won’t work.  You have to really accept her and the situation.  No pretending.  They can sniff out fake acceptance the way you can smell bacon from a mile away. 

The other day I sat around the table with some close friends.

We each went around and shared which end of the spectrum we most easily gravitate toward—acceptance or change.  All but one of us said change.  As we continued to talk, we ended up learning a whole lot.  One is that gravitating toward change is a good thing because it reflects our heart.  We are all in pastoral ministry and our heart is to see lives changed.  I never want that not to be my heartbeat.  There is something really essential there that I want to hold fast to.  But then we asked the question: Does our default toward change ever hinder change?  Like me trying to fix Josie, do we ever force change by skipping over acceptance? 

Consider evangelism as just one example.

We’ve all been there when someone is too pushy with their faith.  They aggressively share their convictions while ignoring obvious signals of non-interest being sent in their direction.  This is a great example of someone’s desire for change being too strong or at least not being channeled properly.  Most people that are skilled in evangelism know that the first step toward influence is acceptance.  Once you accept someone and gain their trust, they are more likely to hear you out.  And again, fake acceptance never works.  You have to truly accept the other person.  And, of course, the act of accepting here is quite different than condoning—although many are prone to confuse the two.  They did with Jesus.  They will with you.  But just like when I accept that my wife is upset, that doesn’t mean I agree with her reasons for being upset.  I just accept her and what she is experiencing in that moment.  And that’s what allows me to speak into her life.  It’s the same with evangelism.  Skipping over acceptance in evangelism ultimately hinders movement toward change.  The best know how to wisely balance the two.  They extend acceptance while they guide a person toward considering change. 

Jesus was incredibly masterful here.  He was constantly balancing acceptance with change, invitation with challenge.  Just read through the gospels and you’ll quickly notice that Jesus practiced both.  He would often invite people to himself and then offer difficult challenges.  “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men” is followed by “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  If you are someone that wants to be instrumental in bringing about change, pray for this same kind of discernment to know when to invite and accept and when to challenge and push toward change. 

If you want to influence others, you need to learn to balance acceptance and change.  But acceptance isn’t just important when interacting with others.  It’s also important, vital even, when interacting with yourself.  Many authors have been drawing attention to this as of late (Brene Brown, Glennon Melton, Anne Lamott, Gerald May, David Benner) in some pretty refreshing ways.  They seem to all be getting at the same thing: you need to learn to accept yourself.  Again, this isn’t my default.  I spend more energy thinking about how to change me.  But I’ve been noticing something lately as I’ve been practicing acceptance of myself.  It’s simply this: I often interact with others best when I live from a place of acceptance.  So, in the end, I do not need to earn God’s love or affection by what I do or fail to do, how much I change or don’t change.  God certainly wants me to change and he is working to bring about changes in my life, but his love for me is contingent upon any of that.  His love for me is constant and sure.  It doesn’t waver on the basis of my shortcomings or failures.  Knowing that I am accepted by God allows me to be more gracious and accepting of myself.  And when I am more gracious and accepting of myself, it ripples out into my relationships.  

We will never balance acceptance and change perfectly.

These two will always exist in tension with one another.  But once you identify which one you most readily gravitate toward, stretching yourself to embrace the other opens up a lot of new possibilities.