Celebrating God’s Handiwork - The Essence of Self-Acceptance
Recently, I nudged alongside my children as they watched Beauty and the Beast for the one-millionth time. I arrived at a great time. Once again, my heart warmed while the beast and his beloved dances and the signature song plays in the background. Afterwards, the beast summons his main steward and instructs him to allow the beauty to leave the castle and the grounds. He does so out of his genuine love for her, realizing that one cannot imprison the object of one’s love.
Then, a most intriguing conversation occurs between the steward, clock, teapot, saucer, candle and others. Greatly surprised by the beast’s actions, they ask, “He has done what?” After a pause, the teapot says, “This means that he has finally learned to love.” In response, one of them asks, “Does this mean that the curse will now be broken?” The teapot replies, “No, he must first learn to accept himself before that happens.”
Self-acceptance is the essential first step of self-love. Practically speaking, self-acceptance means an unconditional belief in the unfailing and everlasting love of Almighty God towards one’s self. It is the celebration of God’s unique handiwork in His purposeful and inerrant creation of you. Self-acceptance acknowledges the particular gifts, abilities and personality that Almighty God graciously gave you.
Self-acceptance transforms the fallacies of self-esteem and self-improvement into spiritual disciplines of personal development and spiritual growth. Self-esteem, essentially, is a cloak for the ego. You assert personal worth in comparison to the value that you put upon other people. Because self-esteem only measures value in distinction to someone else, it permanently places you on the vicious merry-go-round of devaluing others in order to determine who you are.
Likewise, self-improvement imprisons one to the perpetual nightmare of striving for perfection. Defining fundamental characteristics that need improvement means you found deep-seated flaws. The quest of self-improvement never ends because the reach for perfection is unattainable. Similar to a contractor’s punch list of unfinished projects, one personifies a building forever under construction. The divine soul of a child of God could never live peacefully in such a temple. Feeling perpetually incomplete never allows rest and relaxation. The tyranny of the “To Do List” reigns supreme in your consciousness. Moreover, the joy of satisfaction perpetually escapes you, if you are constantly improving yourself.
In contradistinction, self-acceptance liberates you to celebrate your uniqueness in God’s eyes. It encourages and empowers you to give thanks for the singular gift your life is to Almighty God and humankind. Self-acceptance authorizes you to believe that Almighty God did not err in any aspect of His creation. It denies the erroneous concept that your birth could possibly have been a mistake. Rather, it insists that God was most purposeful in His design and intentions in your birth. At your conception, a godly ordained plan for life began. Finding happiness, joy and freedom in life largely depends upon your acceptance of God’s handiwork in creating you.
Because you are a spiritual being created in the image of God, you can accept that there are not any fundamental flaws in your makeup. Having been “fearfully and wonderfully made,” you accept God’s plan for your life. In so doing, you accept that you are loveable intrinsically. You learn to look into the mirror and both like and love the person whom you see. Admittedly, you also accept areas in your character that necessitate change in order to enable you to mature into the highest manifestation of the image of Almighty God. Rather than engaging the superfluous grasp for personal perfection and social applause, you elect to travel the path of interpersonal development and spiritual growth. Any changes you make emerge from a desire to please God instead of furthering an egotistical impulse toward self perfection. Change occurs in order that you may more genuinely accept yourself.
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