Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve (Plus) Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's Lewis B. Smedes Page | Language: English | ISBN:
006128582X | Format: PDF, EPUB
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About the Author
Lewis B. Smedes (1921-2002) was a renowned author, ethicist, and theologian. He was a professor of theology and ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, for twenty-five years. He is the award-winning author of fifteen books, including Forgive and Forget.
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- Series: Plus
- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: HarperOne; 2nd edition (September 25, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 006128582X
- ISBN-13: 978-0061285820
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Warm and witty, this book and its insights will free you to consider the possibilities and beauty of forgiveness. The author gave me the hope I desperately needed. He made me realize that forgiveness is not something in which we snap our fingers or make a quick, one-time decision and it's a done thing; but rather a process by which we travel through stages to reach the place where your memory is healed and you turn back the flow of pain from the past and are free again.
The four stages are: Hurt, Hate, Healing, and Coming Together. Each stage must be worked through and processed for the offended person to become truly free. At first I was a little afraid of the "hate" stage because, as a Christian, I was reluctant to admit I actually did hate the person who hurt me. But now I understand that to hate your enemy is to be completely unable to stop dwelling on the hurt they caused, and unable to wish them well. Ah-hah! That I could totally identify with and furthermore, I discovered that if I wanted the healing of forgiveness, then I must confess that this is the exact place I find myself so that I'll be able to employ the tools that will move me towards the next stage. While forgiving in itself is a simple act, it is done within a mix of complex emotions. To deny them is to sweep them under the rug where no light can reach them. Truthfully, when I started out reading this book I had hoped for a "quick fix," but Lewis Smedes has convinced me that the destination is worth the journey.
Within the pages of Forgive and Forget are many stories of real people mixed in, some with experiences so painful that you are completely inspired to follow them in the mystery of forgiving. Many of their stories are written about in chapters dealing with people who are hard to forgive.
This is the best book I've ever read on the subject of 'forgiveness'. It is written with wit, biblical wisdom, practicality and compassion. It first disabuses you of all the caricatures of what forgiveness is - excusing, tolerating, condoning, etc. Then, as usual, Smedes comes at the subject with his typical hard-nosed treatment. In forgiving someone, the sin has to be grappled with for what it is - wrong, unfair, evil and hurtful. One should not simply gloss over and get over it but take it into account, experience deeply the horrendous evil that it is and call it to curse. It is in confronting sin as it is and coming to grips with the the deep hurts that it brings, that one could ever go on to slowly let go of the associated onslaught of anger and resentment. It is a long journey for most and one might have to forgive the same sin by the same person over and over again. One comes to know that forgiveness is beginning to bear fruit when one begins to see the adversary with new ('magic') eyes and the event of the hurt with a new perspective that sets one's heart free to love. While the goal of forgiveness includes the healing of the aggrieved, it also opens up the real possibility of reconciliation. But Smedes wisely cautions that reconciliation takes two parties and on this side of eternity, forgiveness needs not hang on reconciliation for its completion. This is as realistic as one can get.
In recent years, Smedes has been criticised (unfairly IMHO) for operating too much under the therapeutic mode and falling short of the reconciliation aimed at by the biblical ideals by such books as 'Embodying Forgiveness' by Gregory Jones. While the latter is a fine book to be read profitably in its own right, its critique of Smedes is in my reading wide off the mark.
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