To accept or to love?

Abstract

In contemporary psychology and pedagogy love is identified with the acceptance of another person. This is an incorrect understanding, because to accept is something less than to love. To accept another person means saying: "be as you are!", whereas to love means treating another person in a way that that person might continuously develop and become ever more like Jesus, i.e. become the most beautiful version of itself. Love supports the development of the person loved, however, to mistake love for acceptance deprives one of the motivation to work on oneself. Experience teaches that the degree of development and maturity already attained suffices at the most for today, but not for tomorrow. The one who does not progress, is in danger of regression. One who loves, accepts the truth regarding the characteristics and behaviour of another person, supporting in it what is positive and encouraging it to overcome that which is immature in that person or which is immature in that person's relations with other people.