Quotes from Lewis B. Smedes

The Holy Spirit, thank God, often enables people to forgive even though they are not sure how they did it.

Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk. If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator. Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule.

In a sinful world, no community can exist for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a student's performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to account.

Restorative justice is not a replacement of retributive justice, but a complement. It seeks the rehabilitation of the wrongdoer and the repair of the victim's injury.

The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.

Sometimes I like to list the strongest arguments I can find to support a point of view I think is wrong. When I have them before me, I am up against a real opponent rather than a hypothetical one that is an easy target for me to hit.

The blood of Christ covers all of our sins, but each of us must do personal business with God in order to experience his forgiveness.

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory.

...Forgiving is not having to understand. Understanding may come later, in fragments, an insight here and a glimpse there, after forgiving.

The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name.

A wise judge may let mercy temper justice but may not let mercy undo it.

We forgive freely or we do not really forgive at all.

Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long... If we wait too long to forgive, our rage settles in and claims squatter's rights to our souls.

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.

I have discovered that most people who tell me that they cannot forgive a person who wronged them are handicapped by a mistaken understanding of what forgiving is.