Words matter. These are the best Lewis B. Smedes Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
Some people still make promises and keep those they make. When they do, they help make life around them more stably human.
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.
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.
Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.
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.
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.
Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.
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.
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.
No one really forgives unless he has been hurt.
Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck.
As I read the New Testament, I find only one path to salvation – the path of an informed faith in Jesus Christ.
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.
The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart.
The Holy Spirit, thank God, often enables people to forgive even though they are not sure how they did it.
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. 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.
The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies.
The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.
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.
Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost.
Nothing enables us to forgive like knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven.
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.
You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.
As I read the New Testament, I find only one path to salvation – the path of an informed faith in Jesus Christ.
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.
Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there would be no real human community.
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.
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.
Retributive justice did not arise from any Christian principle; almost every pre-Christian society dealt with wrongdoers by causing them pain.
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.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
Our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.