Quotes from Lewis B. Smedes

We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are. A person feels guilt because he did something wrong. A person feels shame because he is something wrong.

Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts.

Any moment that opens us up to the reality that life is good is a parable of the supreme end for which we were made.

I believe that we should, on biblical grounds, tell all parents of mentally disabled children that God loves their children, regrets terribly that they are disabled, and will, when they die, carry them gently into a heavenly life where every person is forever whole.

As I read the New Testament, I find only one path to salvation - the path of an informed faith in Jesus Christ.

No one really forgives unless he has been hurt.

Seeing reality for what it is is what we call discernment. The work of discernment is very hard.

Promise keeping is a powerful means of grace in a time when people hardly depend on each other to remember and live by their word.

The problem with revenge is that it never evens the score. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops.

God does not give us salvation because we believe. Our believing is only the normal way of receiving the salvation he freely gives.

True, the apostles did not expressly say that people will be saved only if they repent, believe, and confess. But most evangelicals assume - with good reason - that this is what the apostles implied.

Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk.

When we have been badly injured and clearly wronged, we make an instant caricature of the person who did it to us. We define him totally by the one wrong he did.

What is a disloyal act? A person is disloyal if he treats you as a stranger when, in fact, he belongs to you as a friend or partner. Each of us is bound to some special others by the invisible fibers of loyalty.

Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there would be no real human community.

Nothing enables us to forgive like knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven.

My father was only thirty-one when he died of a heart attack, much too young for a father to die and leave his young wife with five rambunctious little kids to take care of. I was the youngest. Only a couple of months old when he died.

We are anxious in the face of our unchangeable past; we long to recreate segments of our private histories, but we are stuck with them.

Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck.

God is not a doormat, nor should anyone else be a doormat.

At the cross, God was punishing Jesus for the sins of the world. God's justice required a penalty from sinners, and in his unspeakable love, he paid the penalty himself in the person of his crucified Son.

Waiting is the hardest work of hope.

Some people still make promises and keep those they make. When they do, they help make life around them more stably human.

Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.