Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval, undemocratic intolerance. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Judging

Behavior

Judgment

Related Quotes:

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well. "

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

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

" 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. "

" Our history is an inevitable component of our being. One thing only can release us from the grip of our history. That one thing is forgiveness. "

Lewis B. Smedes

History

Inevitable

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart. "

" 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. "

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

Lewis B. Smedes

Knowing

Nothing

" No one really forgives unless he has been hurt. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Forgives

Been

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

Lewis B. Smedes

Wrong

Sense

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

Think

Support

" It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Society

Respect

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