Lewis B. Smedes Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart.
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Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there would be no real human community.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Seeing reality for what it is is what we call discernment. The work of discernment is very hard.
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Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck.
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The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.
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Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.
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Our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.
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The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies.
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Nothing enables us to forgive like knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven.
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To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.