What Is the Difference Between Acceptance and Forgiveness?

“Why not just accept what happened to you?” is a question I have heard many times.  When a person is encouraged to accept what happened, this may or may not include forgiveness.  Forgiveness and acceptance are different.

When one accepts what happened, this is a kind of surrender in a positive sense.  It is not a caving in to problems or acquiescing to unjust actions from others.  Acceptance is knowing that the world is imperfect and that bad things can happen.  To accept is to stop fighting against what already happened.  To accept is to resign oneself to the fact that the past event was unpleasant, but now we are in the present, away from that event.

Forgiveness, in contrast, is to offer goodness to those who have created the past unpleasant or decidedly unjust event.  Forgiveness is an active reaching out to the other in the hope that the two might reconcile, although actual reconciliation may not occur. 

A forgiver still can accept what happened, but not then be passive regarding the other person.  The forgiver actively struggles to get rid of resentment and to offer kindness, respect, generosity, and/or love to the other person.

While acceptance can help us adjust to adversity, it, by itself, often is not sufficient to extinguish a lingering resentment toward others.  Forgiveness is the active process for this.

Forgiveness and acceptance: They can work together, but they should not be equated as synonymous.

Robert

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