Quotes by Lewis B. Smedes

About Lewis B. Smedes:

Lewis Benedictus Smedes 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. His 15 books, including the popular Forgive and Forget, covered some important issues including sexuality and forgiveness.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

Our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

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

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

No one really forgives unless he has been hurt.

Lewis B. Smedes

No doubt, corporate CEOs who lie to their shareholders and politicians who lie to their public know and believe intellectually that lying is immoral. Why then do they lie? They lie to others because they first lie to themselves.

Lewis B. Smedes

The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies.

Lewis B. Smedes

Nobody sees reality whole; we all need others to show us the parts of it that they see better than we do. Nobody sees reality with total accuracy; we all need others to correct our own vision.

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

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

Lewis B. Smedes

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

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

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.

Lewis B. Smedes

Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost.

Lewis B. Smedes

Nothing is more private than a woman's body; it is her physical, emotional, and moral citadel. She cannot be free at all if she is not free to decide for herself, in private, what to do with her body.

Lewis B. Smedes

Jesus said that we should render to the state what properly belongs to the state, and though he had taxes in mind, we might reasonably infer that giving the state the job of punishing wrongdoers is one way of giving the state its due.

Lewis B. Smedes

Author Bio

  • NameLewis B. Smedes
  • DescriptionAmerican theologian
  • BornAugust 20, 1921
  • DiedDecember 19, 2002