Lewis B. Smedes Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover that the real prisoner was yourself.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Forgiveness is God's invention for coming to terms with a world in which 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.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“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.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“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.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Vengeance is having a videotape planted in your soul that cannot be turned off. It plays the painful scene over and over again inside your mind...And each time it plays you feel the clap of pain again...Forgiving turns off the videotape of pained memory Forgiving sets you free.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“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.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“...Forgiving is not having to understand. Understanding may come later, in fragments, an insight here and a glimpse there, after forgiving.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Human sexuality includes more than hormones, organs, and orgasms; it runs through the psychic and spiritual ranges of our lives. We experience our sexuality on the spiritual level as a yearning for another person. We want to reach out and stretch ourselves into the depths of another. We want to bring the other person into the orbit of our deepest selves. We want to probe into the mystery of the other.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“When you give up vengeance, make sure you are not giving up on justice. The line between the two is faint, unsteady, and fine...Vengeance is our own pleasure of seeing someone who hurt us getting it back and then some. Justice, on the other hand, is secure when someone pays a fair penalty for wronging another even if the injured person takes no pleasure in the transaction. Vengeance is personal satisfaction. Justice is moral accounting...Human forgiveness does not do away with human justice.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“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.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“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.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“The difference between guilt and shame is very clear--in theory. 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. We may feel guilty because we lied to our mother. We may feel shame because we are not the person our mother wanted us to be.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“We feel properly embarrassed when we are caught doing something that makes us look inept, knuckleheaded, or inappropriate. Maybe the difference is this: we feel embarrassed because we look bad, and we feel shame because we think we are bad. When we are embarrassed, we feel socially foolish. When we are shamed, we feel morally unworthy.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain. Or they forgive fast in order to get an advantage over the people they forgive. And their instant forgiving only makes things worse... People who have been wronged badly and wounded deeply should give themselves time and space before they forgive... There is a right moment to forgive. We cannot predict it in advance; we can only get ourselves ready for it when it arrives... Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Not even God can make something fair out of what is intrinsically unfair. Only one thing can be done. Something must break through the crust of unfairness and create a chance for a new fairness. Only forgiveness can make the breakthrough.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“God invented forgiving as a remedy for a past that not even he could change and not even he could forget. His way of forgiving is the model for our forgiving.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“I am certain that people never forgive because they believe they have an obligation to do it or because someone told them to do it. Forgiveness has to come from inside as a desire of the heart. Wanting to is the steam that pushes the forgiving engine.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Forgive a wife-slammer if you can. But you don't have to live with him. Forgive a husband who is abusing your children if you can. But only after you kick him out of the house. And if you can't get him out, get help. It's available. In the meantime, don't let him near the kids, and don't let anyone tell you that if you forgive him it means you have to stay with him. [There's an important difference between forgiving a person and tolerating their bad behavior.]”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“How many times should you forgive your household bruiser? You should not even think about forgiving him. Not yet. Not as long as he has his foot on your neck. Your problem at this point is not forgiving. Your problem is how to get out of his reach. Once you get away from him, you can think about forgiving him.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed - and each of the five has been me.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Forgiving is, first of all, a way of helping yourself to get free of the unfair pain somebody caused you.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“I am personally thankful that we live together in a large moral house even if we do not drink at the same fountain of faith. The world we experience together is one world, God's world, and our world, and the problems we share are common human problems. So we can talk together, try to understand each other, and help each other.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Hope is to our spirits what oxygen is to our lungs. Lose hope and you die. They may not bury you for awhile, but without hope you are dead inside. The only way to face the future is to fly straight into it on the wings of hope....hope is the energy of the soul. Hope is the power of tomorrow.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“To miss out on joy is to miss out on the reason for your existence.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes -
“Forgiving is an affair strictly between a victim and a victimizer. Everyone else should step aside...The worst wounds I ever felt were the ones people gave to my children. Wrong my kids, you wrong me. And my hurt qualifies me to forgive you. But only for the pain you caused me when you wounded them. My children alone are qualified to forgive you for what you did to them.”
-- Lewis B. Smedes
