To accept one's fate implies more than resignation, it implies a recognition of one's capability for change and the decision not to use that capability. A man who lives in poverty because he has to is a beggar, a man who chooses poverty is a saint.
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Adam Gopnik, in this week's New Yorker, argues that the double helix of the tolerant and humble Jesus and the miracle-working, apocalypse-preaching Christ is fundamental to the DNA of Christianity [1]. As he puts it:
This fixed, steady twoness at the heart of the Christian story can’t be wished away by liberal hope any more than it could be resolved by theological hair-splitting. Its intractability is part of the intoxication of belief. It can be amputated, mystically married, revealed as a fraud, or worshipped as the greatest of mysteries. The two go on, and their twoness is what distinguishes the faith and gives it its discursive dynamism
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3 comments:
Tolerance requires authority, self-sacrifice requires the ability to escape."
I like that. Thank you. God bless.
To accept one's fate implies more than resignation, it implies a recognition of one's capability for change and the decision not to use that capability
How so ? Min expatiating a bit on this ? how is the latter implied by 'accepting' one's 'fate' ?
@NM – I guess that ‘one’ here belongs to the western culture where it is assumed that one has the ability to change his/her fate.
Resignation is when one recognizes that one has no power to change one’s fait so stops trying.
Acceptance is when on recognizes one’s ability to change one’s fate, but decides not to do it.
@Falstaff
I wonder if to accept one’s role in the great scheme of things is not a more generic religious belief? (Just that from a Christian perspective one has free choice.)
On the other side there is “to recognize that one does not have the ability to change one’s fate, but never stop trying “ (Sisyphus’ Myth)
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