"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"
About this Quote
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.
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.
Quote Details
| Topic | Forgiveness |
|---|---|
| Source | Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve — Lewis B. Smedes, 1984 (book). Passage on the nature of forgiving evil appears in this work. |
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