Lewis Smedes The Art Of Forgiveness

“The Art of Forgiveness” by Lewis Smedes is a book that got me thinking during the time I was reading it. Forgiveness is something that is hard to do, and especially if someone that did a big damage to your life.

The objective that Lewis Smedes has for the people to learn how to forgive. By forgiving the person you don’t need to make the enemy your best friend, or it doesn’t make him in good terms with you. The author states “Each person’s healing follows the same basic script. This is why for all of us, no matter how badly we have been hurt or when or why it happened, the remedy has one name: forgiveness.” This quote is very important because even though harm is caused, the only way to move on with your life, and not live in the past, is forgiveness. Without to forgive you can’t live the life. If you learn how to forgive. She talks about how difficult to surrender the right to get even with the person. She believes that there are one or two steps to forgiveness. Getting rid of getting even is something that has to happen to forgive the person. Getting even with someone will make you look as bad as the person that did something wrong to you. The author believes by letting go of vengeance you will have a chance of justice.
Personally I believe she was successful getting to the point of forgiveness.
I am not a person that forgive, and this book honestly helped me out think about to forgiveness the people that hurt me during time. She also, brought the reason that forgiving the person you don’t need you reunite and become friends. Pain and wrongful pains are two important terms that come with forgiveness. Wrongful pain is something you don’t expect to come. For example if your friend goes against your trust and tells someone something you told them not to say, that’s wrongful pain because you did not see that
coming.

This is helping me think on how I should look for forgiveness, and not look for vengeance. I look back at chapter one because I’m a person that likes to get even. When she states “One forgives in one’s heart, in the sight of God, as the pope did.” This quote kind has me thinking that forgiveness is something that everyone thinks about in the heart. Something that has me thinking is when the author talked about the pain, on how to own our pain, and how acknowledge it. This bring the notion of peace because if everyone could forgive than everything will be alright, and nothing will cause vengeance. As humanity we could look to open our heart and think about forgiveness.

What I mostly got from this book is to forgive, and not bring vegance or carry justice to the person that hurt you. Also, the pain that you have from the person that hurt you, you should acknowledge on what happen. There are different steps of to get forgiveness. “Forgiving is the only way to heal the wounds of a past that we cannot change and cannot forget.” This quote is important because it shows that just simply by forgiving you can heal the wounds from you past. Although you may sometimes here and there think about what happened to you, and it may make you sad, just the feeling of forgiveness can help you move on with the rest of your life.

After reading this book I found it very helpful, and I found myself realizing that I need to become more understanding and forgive more. I would highly recommend this book to just about anyone. I feel like this book can help someone who is going through a lot, and is struggle with a problem. Not only did I find this book interesting but I found it helpful to myself. I feel as though I can use this book to help myself though life. I highly recommend this book for the next person that is going to take this class.