Lewis Benedictus Smedes (1921–2002) was a renowned Christian author, ethicist, and theologian in the Reformed tradition. He was a professor of theology and ethics for twenty-five years at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is the award-winning author of fifteen books, including Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve. In this books, he shows that it is possible to heal our pain and find room in our hearts to forgive. Breaking down the process of healing into four stages and offering stories of real people's experience throughout, this wise book provides hope and solace for all who long for the peace that comes with forgiveness.
Lewis B. Smedes Quotes
Forgiveness is God's invention for coming to terms with a world in which, despite their best intentions, people are unfair to each other and hurt each other deeply. He began by forgiving us. And he invites us all to forgive each other.
None of us wants to admit that we hate someone...When we deny our hate we detour around the crisis of forgiveness. We suppress our spite, make adjustments, and make believe we are too good to be hateful. But the truth is that we do not dare to risk admitting the hate we feel because we do not dare to risk forgiving the person we hate.
You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.
...Forgiving is not having to understand. Understanding may come later, in fragments, an insight here and a glimpse there, after forgiving.
You can forgive someone almost anything. But you cannot tolerate everything... We don't have to tolerate what people do just because we forgive them for doing it. Forgiving heals us personally. To tolerate everything only hurts us all in the long run.
The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name.
When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.
If we say that monsters [people who do terrible evil] are beyond forgiving, we give them a power they should never have... they are given the power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most. We give them power to condemn their victims to live forever with the hurting memory of their painful pasts. We give the monsters the last word.
We forgive freely or we do not really forgive at all.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.
Gandhi was right: if we all live by 'an eye for an eye' the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness.