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Forgiving Ourselves

From Pilgrim Heart:

… Lewis Smedes observes: “We do not have to be bad persons to do bad things. If only bad people did bad things to other people we would live in a pretty good world. We hurt people by our bungling as much as we do by our vices.” Ironically, our very decency – our desire to be “good people” – can compound our capacity to hurt others. Semdes observes shrewdly, “the more decent we are the more acutely we feel our pain for the unfair hurts we caused. Our pain becomes our hate. The pain we cause other people becomes the hate we feel for ourselves. For having done them wrong. We judge, we convict, and sentence ourselves. Mostly in secret.

Since “none is righteous, no, not one.” healing comes when we recognize that we are not outside the set of sinners, that we have failed time and time again, and will fail again – yet God’s grace is sufficient, even for us.

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