Life & Wisdom Quote by Lewis B. Smedes

Forgiveness here isn’t the soft-focus kind that lets perpetrators keep their social standing and victims keep their silence. Smedes is drawing a hard border between forgiving and forgetting, and he does it with a prosecutorial rhythm: “we do not excuse... we do not tolerate... we do not smother.” The repetition functions like a gavel. It’s not calming the reader down; it’s refusing the common cultural shortcut where “forgiveness” becomes a demand to move on before anyone has told the truth.

The subtext is a rebuke to two opposite temptations. One is moral laziness: calling something “complicated” so you don’t have to confront it. The other is corrosive vengeance: letting anger become the only form of justice you can imagine. Smedes insists you have to earn forgiveness by first letting the evil land at full weight - “shock and stun and enrage” - a three-step escalation that validates the body’s response to harm. That’s a quietly radical move in religious-inflected discourse, where forgiveness is often framed as instant virtue or spiritual performance.

Context matters: Smedes wrote in a Christian ethical tradition that treats forgiveness as a command, but he’s trying to rescue it from cheap grace. He reframes forgiveness as a second act, not a reflex: truth-telling first, moral clarity always. The intent is pastoral and political at once - a way to keep mercy from becoming an alibi, and to keep justice from becoming a cage.