Website owner:  James Miller

Accepting ourselves as we are --- with all our inabilities and deficiencies

   Q. Why should we accept ourselves as we are?  Why should we 
   accept ourselves with all of our inabilities and deficiencies? 

   A. Because inabilities and deficiencies are not what is really 
   important.  What is really important is moral merit --- it is 
   things like honesty, goodness, kindness, integrity, character.  
   It is on these things that we will be judged by God in the end.  
   We will be judged by what we were, what we became, what we did, 
   in a moral and spiritual sense.  If in spite of obstacles, 
   hardships, inabilities and deficiencies we were people of 
   goodness, integrity and character we are worthy of an even 
   greater prize.  Mental and physical deficiencies and 
   inabilities are not what makes us inferior.  Moral deficiencies 
   make us inferior.  If we see things right, if our value system 
   is right, if our priorities are right, if we look at things the 
   way God looks at them, we will understand this.  We will not 
   have problems with self-acceptance and self-esteem. 



   Physical Appearance.  How about people who are dissatisfied 
   with their physical appearance, who regard themselves as homely 
   or ugly and have a complex about it?  The truth is physical 
   attractiveness may be a big negative when it comes to spiritual 
   considerations.  The attractive person is likely to be subject 
   to many more temptations towards doing wrong than the 
   unattractive person.  The attention he gets from others, the 
   power that he finds he has over others, etc. can be more of a 
   spiritual curse than anything else.  Plainness and 
   unattractiveness can keep a person humble, save him from a lot 
   of temptations, and make virtuous living easier. 


   Nov 1991