Thinking Christian

Book Review

“One of the most haunting things about living in Rwanda after the genocide is that killers still walk among the survivors.” (From page 249.)

I have just experienced one of the most remarkable books of my life: As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, by Prison Fellowship senior writer and editor Catherine Claire Larson.

Next Thursday evening at 9:00 pm EDT, here on this blog, you will have the opportunity to meet Catherine and interact with her in an online chat. I urge you to mark it on your calendar. If you can get your hands on the book before then, I urge you to do that too.

This posting will not be a complete book review. I intend to extend that out over several posts between now and Thursday. What I have to offer right now is an initial reaction.

In about 100 days in 1994, between 500,000 and 1 million Rwandan Tutsis were massacred by their neighbors, the Hutus. Murder on this scale is beyond imagining. Larson tells seven very personal stories of victims’ and survivors’ experiences—stories not for those with weak stomachs. Her reporting succeeds in walking the fine line between expressing the heart of the pain, and sensationalizing it. I’ll come back to some of that later.

The real core of her book is not about the massacre, but about what has come since. Rwandan prisons could never hold all the murderers. Large numbers of them were released. Killers walk among the survivors. And in the stories she brings us in this book, reconciliation has been possible.

Personal Reflections
I come from a very small town, from very middle-class roots. My mother’s parents were both immigrants from Norway, homesteaders in North Dakota, hard-working, God-fearing people. They moved their large family to Michigan late in the 1920s, to a small town south of Flint, which at the time was very much a thriving community. All of their children—my mother and aunts and uncles—lived out their values of hard work, love, and respect. You wouldn’t think that two of their grandchildren would meet their ends through murder.

My cousin Jeanette was jogging in a park in Lansing. It took fifteen years to identify her murderer, which finally happened through some outstanding detective work aided by a virtual miracle of evidence found after all those years. Her case was featured on the A&E channel’s Cold Case Files show. I didn’t see it when it first aired. I happened on it while alone in a hotel room on a business trip, surfing through channels with the remote control. Let me give you this advice I hope you never need: if you are ever going to see the story of a relative’s murder on TV, don’t do it while alone far from home. I could hardly bear to watch it. It wasn’t that the story was new to me; I had been keeping up with it all along through the family. But it was brutal to see it played out before me on the television screen. I could hardly stand watching it, but there was no way I could turn it off, either. This was family. At the end they interviewed my Aunt Muriel and my cousin Joe, Jeannette’s brother. I sat there watching, crying, alone.

My cousin Brian was walking his dog in an upscale gated community just west of Orlando. A car drove by, going too fast, and he called out to them to slow down. Somebody got out of the car with a gun and shot him for it. I saw him in the hospital a few weeks later, again while traveling alone on a business trip. The first time I saw him—well, to describe his condition would be to go beyond the bounds of what I ought to write. He hardly looked human. The second time I saw him, a few months later, there appeared to be hope. He was able to sit up in bed, and was in good spirits. But he succumbed to a final infection. His killer was never identified.

Massively Multiplied Pain
Experiences like these carry a pain that will never go away. They can also carry an anger that lasts. Compared to Rwanda, though, they are as nothing. Neighbors killed neighbors by the scores. Survivors lost mother, father, siblings, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends. I do not know the multiplier that would take my experiences and feelings, and match them to those of the survivors in Rwanda.

Reconciliation
But these are stories of reconciliation and forgiveness, of anger that ends even though the pain lasts—even of friendship being restored. They are stories of the work of Jesus Christ in the most battered hearts imaginable. There are even stories of the work of Christ in repentant killers’ hearts.

It took me a long time to read this book. (I hope that you will be able to read it more quickly than I did.) On virtually every page–especially in the first several chapters—I had to stop and think and pray, to recover: to recover from facing the reality of how brutal we can be to each other. Even more than that I had to pause often to recover (in a way) from the astonishing wonder of how God could work to bring forgiveness and reconciliation nevertheless.

I can forgive my cousins’ killers as far as it is my place to do so (for the loss or pain I have experienced through what they did), but to do so is to pass a far lesser test than Rwandans have faced. One of the killers is in jail for life, and since I wasn’t at trial I’ve never seen or met him. The other is unknown, and will probably never be identified. Forgiveness is no mere academic point in that case, but it is nothing like forgiving a genocidaire who targeted most of one’s own family—and then living as neighbors with him in the same village.

Could the Gospel really be that good, that really powerful, to effect such deep change in the most difficult of real situations? Then it is even better than I had realized. Not any easier, but better.

There will be more to come. Please be ready to join us for our chat on Thursday night.

As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, by Catherine Claire Larson. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. Paperback, 284 pages. Amazon Price US$12.47.

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Book Review

It is said that light shines brightest in dark places. I wrote last Saturday about Catherine Claire Larson’s book As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda. It is probably both the darkest and the brightest book I have ever read.

Before I proceed, let me remind you: Next Thursday evening at 9:00 pm EDT, here on this blog, you will have the opportunity to meet Catherine and interact with her in an online chat. I urge you to mark it on your calendar. Instructions for joining the chat will be posted on this blog just before it begins. No new software or lengthy sign-in will be required; all you’ll need to do is to visit the proper web page, enter a name under which you will participate, and begin.

If you can get your hands on the book before then, I urge you to do so.

The book is about the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and especially about its aftermath, especially the very remarkable reconciliation and forgiveness that has taken place between many of the Hutu genocidaires and Tutsi survivors.

The stories all place Jesus Christ at the center of these works of restoration. Jesus set the example himself: hanging on a cross to die, having experienced severe beatings from the soldiers who executed him, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgiveness through Christ is at the core of Christianity, and closely tied to that (as the Lord’s Prayer emphasizes) is our need to forgive one another.

But the stories told in this book, all of them true, represent extreme situations. One of them is about Rosaria, whose husband was killed early in the season of genocide. She and her son were later attacked by Hutus. She saw her son die, and she herself was left for dead, but she and the unborn baby she was carrying survived.

In a separate incident her sister Christine and Christine’s two children had also been killed. Though she did not know it, it was a neighbor named Saveri who had committed the deed. “After killing,” says the author, “Saveri was changed. ‘I was not the same’ [he said]. ‘I was void of peace in my heart from that moment.’”

Rosaria was hardly at peace herself, for quite different reasons. When order was finally restored, she was left alone, grieving, a single mother with lasting injuries, an inadequate home to live in, and a sorghum crop to manage.

Another survivor, Gahigi, who had lost all but eight of 150 family members, was a Christian pastor who “had been jailed twice in 1992 for teaching people that hating is a terrible sin.” His own teaching was put to the test when his sister’s killer, weeping bitterly, pleaded with him for forgiveness. “That day,” writes Larson, “Gahigi embraced not just a killer, but what he believed was his calling to be a mediator.”

Gahigi’s story intersects first with Saveri’s. “When he heard Gahigi and others preach of forgiveness, Saveri could not comprehend mercy,” but in time he was able to accept God’s gift of forgiving grace. Yet he knew he also needed to seek forgiveness from surviving family members.

Over a period of several years, Gahigi facilitated meetings between neighborhood groups of Hutus and Tutsis for the purpose of reconciliation, and here Rosaria re-enters the story, “pulled by a need to know the details surrounding the death of her loved ones and by a desire to somehow find release from the past.” It took several meetings for Saveri to summon courage to do it, but finally he confessed to her what he had done, and begged for her forgiveness.

Larson does not tell us how long it took her to answer, or how difficult it might have been. She does relate what Rosaria said: “I forgive you. If you have sincerely confessed your sin before God and truly changed, then I forgive you. How can I refuse to forgive when I did not make you?”

Rosaria was still facing a difficult sorghum harvest ahead. Saveri had been involved in a home-building project in the village. It was when Saveri came to help with her harvest, and when he took her to the new home he had built for her and her young daughter, not far from his own new home, that reconciliation was shown to be complete.

How could such a horror have happened in the first place? Alexander Solzhenitsyn caught a piece of the answer when he wrote, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

This is not just about “someone else, somewhere else,” you see. As We Forgive includes several personal reflection sections, bringing focus to forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration for us who live far from Africa. We have all experienced darkness, in ourselves and others. This book shows how bright the light can shine through it.

P.S. I made a commitment last week to post weekly on evidences that Christianity is true. One category I included in my list of evidences to write about was “changed lives of believers.” The effect of the Gospel on these people is really quite stunning; I found myself thinking, “I knew Christ was good and could do good works in us, but this is more than I had expected.” It is not clear from the book whether there are parallel works of restoration happening among non-believers. That is a question someone might want to ask the author when we chat with her on Thursday night.

As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, by Catherine Claire Larson. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. Paperback, 284 pages. Amazon Price US$12.47.

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Book Review

For many readers, Rwanda in 1994 may seem like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Genocide, thankfully, is probably very far removed from your experience, as it is from mine. What then do you and I do with a book like As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda?

I can’t go into details here because of sensitivity toward a non-family member, but just last night an issue of deep betrayal and hurt arose in our home last night. The offense started last summer. The parties live hundreds of miles apart, and restoration has never happened, for many complicated reasons. One thing that came to my mind was, “If the Rwandans can forgive and be reconciled, there’s hope for this friendship, too.” In fact both of the parties involved are making steps toward each other now.

No one would suggest that these things are easy, but a book like this one shows that the difficult is not impossible in Christ. The author, Catherine Claire Larson, makes a point of bringing the question of reconciliation home to readers, with opportunities to consider how we might practice it in our settings. After each of the seven personal stories of Rwandans restored, there is what you might call a multi-page sidebar (she calls them “Interludes) on a related topic situated in North America, or focused right on the reader’s needs.

Larson, who writes for Prison Fellowship, focuses the first of these on “restorative justice.” Having just illustrated it in practice in Rwanda, she asks whether it can be applied here in America. Restorative justice involves the offender and the offended meeting, restitution being made to the extent possible, and giving the parties opportunity at least to see one another as real people. It

focuses on a more reparative approach to justice, where healing and justice are not separated. Crime is seen as a violation of people and relationships. Therefore, according to [Eastern Mennonite University Professor Howard] Zehr, restorative justice aims at identifying responsibilities, meeting needs, and promoting healing…. a process in which victim, offender, and community are involved in dialogue, mutual agreement, empathy, and the taking of responsibility.

This is not just about families, schools, or neighborhoods, but about civil justice. Does it sound idealistic, even impossible? Consider the test it has been put to in Africa. It’s a concept I had never thought of, let alone studied, but I find it intriguing.

Other Interludes deal with “wrestling with forgiveness,” “journeying toward reconciliation,” “facing the darkness,” “comfort my people,” “reversing the downward spiral,” and (a “postlude”), “reconciliation as a transfiguration moment.” All of them are informed by high-quality current thinking on relationships and restoration. All of them include questions for reflection. All of them are intensely practical. And for those who have read other books on forgiveness, or who have tried to restore relationships before and found it all seems hopelessly impossible, all of them are illustrated by the corresponding real-life stories from Rwanda to show that what seems impossible may not be.

For one further level of practical application, the book also includes information on how to learn more or get involved with meeting needs in and around Rwanda. But that step does not require you to buy the book: you can find much of the same here.

One more reminder: Tomorrow (Thursday) evening at 9:00 pm EDT, here on this blog, you will have the opportunity to meet Catherine and interact with her in an online chat. I urge you to mark it on your calendar. Instructions for joining the chat will be posted on this blog just before it begins.

No new software or lengthy sign-in will be required; all you’ll need to do is to visit the proper web page, enter a name under which you will participate, and immediately begin.

As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, by Catherine Claire Larson. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. Paperback, 284 pages. Amazon Price US$12.47.

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Transcript, with links added, of the April 30 chat with Catherine Claire Larson, author of As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda (reviewed here).

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[Tom G] Good evening, Catherine, and welcome to Thinking Christian!

[Catherine Larson] Thanks Tom, I’m really glad to be joining you tonight!

[Tom G] It’s a privilege to have you here. We can wait a few moments, I think, and see who else may join in.

[Catherine Larson] That sounds good. I’ll stand by…

[Jay Jordan] join

[Tom G] Welcome, Jay.

[Catherine Larson] Welcome!

[Jay Jordan] This is my first visit.

…

[Catherine Larson] I thought that might be you! Did you see it on Facebook?

[Jay Jordan] I sure did. I am very happy that your book is doing so well.

[Tom G] How are the sales going?

[Catherine Larson] I think they’ve been going well. The numbers on Amazon have been really strong. And it has already gone into a second printing.

[Jay Jordan] I never got any figures but understand they are in the second printing?

[ahc] join

[Tom G] Welcome, ahc!

[Catherine Larson] Glad you could make it!

[ahc] Me too! Andy Crouch here. Such a fan of this book I just had to sign on and say hi.

[Catherine Larson] Aw, it’s great you could drop by!

[Tom G] Catherine, could you share with us some of your personal experience of what it was like researching this book?

[Catherine Larson] Sure Tom, let’s see where to begin. For one thing, interviewing Rwandans was a really emotional journey for me. I had to really deeply enter into their personal stories of grief and tragedy.

[sabarbra] join

[Catherine Larson] And then as I tried to put their stories to words, I really felt like I had to, in a sense, walk their journeys vicariously. It was a very heavy several months of writing. But at the same time I also saw how clearly the hope of Christ shines through these men and women. I was so blessed to see real life examples of the grace of God right before my eyes.

[Tom G] It sounds like a wonderful but wrenching kind of experience.

[Catherine Larson] I spent a lot of time reading and researching before I left for Rwanda.

[Mark] join

[Catherine Larson] Once there, it was just a whirlwind of non-stop interviewing. I really didn’t have a lot of time to process while I was there, so a lot of that had to happen when I came back.

[ahc] [hoping I'm not interrupting ... not sure of the chat etiquette] Have any of you had the chance to read Philip Gourevitch’s piece in the New Yorker this week? Catherine, I’d be really interested in your take on it.

[Catherine Larson] I’ve only read the abstract online. Did you get to see it AHC?

[ahc] I just read it this morning. It’s pretty interesting . . . among other things he didn’t find anyone who was really happy with the gacaca system . . . . . . neither victims nor perpetrators . . . . . . though he seems to think it is an acceptable solution. But he definitely doesn’t see it as real reconciliation, which leads to my question . . .

[Catherine Larson] Gacaca has a lot of faults, even for its good points.

[ahc] . . . which is how do you think the kinds of personal, church-mediated reconciliation you describe in your book fits with the gacaca system?

[Tom G] It may be helpful to define gacaca for those who might not have read the book

[Catherine Larson] I really think gacaca is only the beginning. For those of you who may not be as familiar, gacaca is justice on the grass. It is an ancient tribal system of justice that was resurrected to deal with the genocide cases. In it, they elect elders from the town who hear the grievances and then work toward solutions. But in gacaca there is no formal representation as there is here in our legal system. Getting back to the question, gacaca was put in place because Rwanda’s legal system was wiped out after the genocide. Most of the lawyers and judges were killed and those who weren’t were exiled. They had hundreds of thousands of crimes to deal with and no system to bring justice. When you look at how slow the International Criminal Tribunal has been you see also that that would be no way to bring justice to the masses. They needed something and this was what the war-torn country adopted. But from everything people told me gacaca only brought people so far. It brought criminals forward to confess and ask for forgiveness. It brought them face to face with survivors and other extended family, but in most cases it didn’t get them all the way.

[ahc] So would the stories you describe have taken place largely after the gacaca process had played out?

[Catherine Larson] Yes.

[Tom G] What made the difference when it did get them all the way?

[Mr. Tumnus] join

[Catherine Larson] Well, forgiveness and confession are processes. You don’t usually just wake up one morning and say, “I was wrong about my whole way of thinking.” Many of the offenders who have had true changes of heart have had a time of learning about the history of Rwanda. They have also learned about the nature of sin and they’ve learned about the grace of God. For the people I interviewed who have been able to forgive, they likewise had a process, one which usually included someone mediating or at least suggesting that forgiveness could be an option forward. [some words lost here] reconciliation, in my opinion, are doing the heart work–and the hard work of bringing Rwandans together. Does that make sense?

[Jay Jordan] join

[Mr. Tumnus] join

[Catherine Larson] oops, I just lost connection, but I’m back. I guess we all did.

[Mark] join

[Main Chat Admin] I’m not sure what caused that… glad we’re back.

[ahc] join

[Catherine Larson] We’re doing pretty good though for a first time chat, though, right?

[omavan] join

[sabarbra] join What you were just saying does make sense, in context of the book especially

[sabarbra] join

[Main Admin] Hope this doesn’t lose connection again! There’s no indication of the cause for that happening.

[Mark] join

[Catherine Larson] I’m back.

[Tom G] join

[Tom G] Did you have opportunity really to see that a Christian context for forgiveness made a difference, as compared to other approaches?

[Catherine Larson] I would say that I really saw Christian contexts creating true reconciliation. And I would say that others commented frequently that there were two types of forgiveness going on in Rwanda today one is a forgiveness from the heart and the other is a technical forgiveness, it is more like what we’d call a pardon When people talked about the latter, they meant what was happening in gacaca. When they talked about the former, they meant what was happening through the work of churches and other mediation groups. They meant a true, from the heart forgiveness. I did interview Christians and non-Christians alike. I did not find any stories that were compelling enough to pursue among those who did not profess faith.

[Tom G] When I was writing a synopsis of the Rosaria story, I wondered, “will people think this is too good to be true?” This blog has a number of atheist/skeptic readers…

[Catherine Larson] In a sense, the Gospel is too good to be true.

[Tom G] But there is, in many of the stories you related, an amazing happy ending.

[Catherine Larson] I would say a hopeful ending. They still have to wrestle with their decision to forgive when new wounds emerge.

[Tom G] That’s a good way to put it.

[Catherine Larson] And there are many financial and physical tolls to what they went through. I could give lots of examples of that. But I wanted to show readers what I saw and that is there is hope in the eyes of the people who are reaching toward the light. And that hope is the breeding ground for more hope. By the way, Tom, thank you for sharing a bit of your own personal experience in your review. I’m sure what you’ve experienced makes that difficult.

[Tom G] You’re welcome. It doesn’t compare with the Rwandans’s stories, but it does show it’s not just “over there” somewhere.

[Catherine Larson] Yeah, I’ve been amazed as people have shared how these stories touch them.

[Tom G] The book was an emotionally wrenching read for me, but the hardest part wasn’t so much in the stories of pain and loss… It was in recognizing the sheer power of the Gospel at work. It made me wonder how much of God’s greatness there is, that I’ve never yet experienced or imagined.

[Catherine Larson] I agree.

[Tom G] The stories were awful in the beginning, awe-ful in their outcomes. I mean in the sense of “awesome” of course.

[Catherine Larson] Of course.

[Tom G] Mark and sabarbra, do you have any thoughts or questions for Catherine?

[Catherine Larson] I had to laugh when Publisher’s Weekly called my stories “awful” in the same sense.

[Tom G] I can imagine!

[Mark] I’m just enjoying the conversation.

[Catherine Larson] Glad to hear it!

[Tom G] Where do you go from here with this, Catherine?

[Catherine Larson] How do you mean?

[Tom G] I know you’re promoting the book, of course. Is there a further tie-in to Prison Fellowship and its North American Ministries, too? Or more advocacy for Rwanda and its people… Or helping others learn to discover peace? Or….?

[Catherine Larson] Well, right now I’m really promoting ways for people to get involved in the ongoing work of reconciliation. I’ve done this all on my own time, and I’m trying to give visibility to all the groups doing good work there, not just Prison Fellowship. One exciting thing is the launch of the Living Bricks Campaign. My friend, Laura Waters Hinson, whose film of the same name inspired my book has worked with Prison Fellowship International to launch the Living Bricks Campaign. Basically, it’s an opportunity for people to give to help ex-prisoners visibly show their remorse and repentance by building homes for survivors. They supply the labor and man-power and we help to supply the material costs. The villages being built are like the one that Rosaria and Saveri are now living in. They are villages of reconciled communities. So I’m really excited to help promote that.

[Tom G] Sounds great–where is this being done?

[Travis] join

[Catherine Larson] I’ve got information on that as well as groups like Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee, which works in reconciliation on my website.

[Tom G] Welcome, Travis

[Travis] Hello!

[Catherine Larson] They’ve only just launched the Living Bricks campaign. I’m not sure yet which part of Rwanda will be the first area where the villages are built. The Umuvumu village is in the south. And yes, welcome Travis! But in terms of next projects for me.. I really like narrative non-fiction. I hope that I can bring other stories to life that will inspire people. My husband and I have already been talking about one project that we think has a lot of potential.

[Tom G] You do well with it. As I wrote in my review, I was impressed with your ability to share the heart of such a difficult situation without sensationalizing it.

[Catherine Larson] Thank you!

[Tom G] Can you share more about that next project, or do we have to wait and see?

[Catherine Larson] I think you’ll have to wait and see. Its still in the embryo stage right now…

[Tom G] Travis, do you have any thoughts or questions for Catherine?

[Travis] Well, I’ve got an inside scoop on some of the future projects…and trust me, they’re great ideas. Catherine is a great writer and it’s a blessing to know her!

[sabarbra] Hello, Catherine. I am curious whether you have any general observations about the African Christians that we here in the US should emulate?

[Catherine Larson] That’s a good question. Those who have been through this process of healing really have a desire that their stories bless others. I was impressed that when I was talking to an orphan like Claude, he was already looking beyond hoping that the reconciliation he was experiencing in Rwanda could bless the Great Lakes region of Rwanda. Joy likewise was hopeful that her story could help people in the West learn to forgive. I think that spirit about the things God teaches us through our trials is a spirit which we would do well to emulate.

[Travis] Did they have any specific vision for “the nations” or were they more concerned (understandably) with fellow Rwandans?

[Catherine Larson] In Claude’s case, his vision is really for the war-torn regions of Congo, Uganda, Sudan.

[Travis] Wow.

[Tom G] There’s plenty right there

[Catherine Larson] No kidding. God blesses vision like that I think. And faith like that.

[Tom G] I’ve been sharing with American Christians that if we think we are the face of Christianity, we’re dead wrong, numerically. And it’s not just numeric, is it?

[Catherine Larson] The Global South God is moving there in amazing ways.

[sabarbra] I was touched by the “no strings attached” forgiveness that accepted the apology as genuine. I think that American Christians often want to do more conditional forgiving.

[Catherine Larson] And also forgiving that is more of a personal internal act… like Dr. Phil says, “Forgiveness is a choice I make to release myself from anger, bitterness, and pain.” It’s a more one-side view of forgiveness. It’s more about “me.”

[sabarbra] That’s very true.

[Catherine Larson] Contrast that with the “costly grace” that Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes about. Forgiveness is costly. And extending forgiveness is a gracious gift. Sometimes even a risky one. Well, Tom, do you think that’s a good place to close?

[Tom G] I do, unless there are any final thoughts from someone else

[Travis] Thank you for sharing, Catherine!

[Tom G] Thank you for being with us here, and thank you for bringing us the stories of reconciliation from Rwanda!

[Mark] I just want to say thanks to Catherine for taking the time tonigt to share with us.

[Tom G] Thank you to all who have been here.

[sabarbra] Thanks! May your book continue to bring hope to its readers!

[Catherine Larson] And thank you Tom and everyone! It’s been a joy to share a bit more about what God is doing in Rwanda today.

[Tom G] You’re welcome!

[Mark] quit

[Tom G] That will end the chat, then, though it will stay open on your screen until you close this window. Good night!

[Catherine Larson] Good night! — Thanks again, Tom.

As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, by Catherine Claire Larson. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. Paperback, 284 pages. Amazon Price US$12.47.

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David Ellis raised an interesting question with respect to forgiveness and restoration in Rwanda: why would I want to forgive someone who killed members of my family? How does that come to be considered a desirable thing to do? I offered a brief answer in that discussion thread, but I didn’t do it justice. It is as complex a subject as one could ask for, dealing as it does with the depths of human relationships under their greatest stress. A blog entry cannot uncover every possible nuance or address all the questions. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to do what we can do.

I’ll start with a biblically-based definition. A quick source for all NT usages of forgive, forgiven, or forgiveness is available here.

To forgive (the verb form) and forgiveness (the noun form) are used to translate three Greek words:

• ἀφίημι (aphiēmi, verb) and the related ἄφεσις (aphesis, noun), used in the sense relating to forgiveness some 64 times in the NT. The noun form is frequently translated in some English versions as remission, the cancellation of a debt, charge, or penalty.
• χαρίζομαι (charizomai, verb), used in the relevant sense about 12 times in the NT
• ἀπολύω (apoluō, verb), used only in Luke 6:37

The links on the anglicized forms are to a lexicon with further links to NT passages using these words. As is the case with English or any other language, these words have multiple meanings not necessarily related to each other. The definitions relevant to forgiveness may be summarized: to forgive is to graciously and benevolently grant pardon, restoration, or cancellation of a penalty with respect to a debt or a crime.

Certainly genocide is a crime of massive proportions; the Rwanda story was about survivors granting exceptional forgiveness. Please allow me now to string together several somewhat disconnected observations, which I hope will eventually coalesce to form a coherent picture.

Forgiveness is the prerogative of the person who has experienced the hurt, loss, or pain. I wrote earlier about two murders in my own family, and there I said,

I can forgive my cousins’ killers as far as it is my place to do so (for the loss or pain I have experienced through what they did)…

My point is that I can only forgive the killers for the way they hurt me. I cannot forgive them for the hurt they caused anyone else in the family, or among their friends; it is strictly up to each person to do that. It would be horribly wrong and presumptuous to say “you are forgiven” as if my word on that covered all harm done. Further, I cannot forgive the crime they committed with respect to the law; only the state can do that. In Rwanda, 60,000 accused killers were set free from prison just because there was no place to incarcerate them all. Obviously that’s exceptional. Most of all, I cannot forgive them for their sins against God himself. This is why Jesus’ words of forgiveness in Mark 2:1-12 raised such a ruckus: he was taking up a prerogative that belonged only to God.

Forgiveness is closely tied to repentance. This was how it was practiced in Rwanda, and that is the biblical form as well (Mark 1:4; Acts 2:38; Luke 24:47). There is at least one shining exception to that, however: Jesus on the cross, praying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). It seems to me that one can forgive another person in one’s heart, without requiring that other person’s repentance, in the sense that one lets go of one’s anger and desire to punish or gain revenge. To move to the next level, though, where relationship is restored, seems to require genuine repentance. This is also biblical: a restored relationship with God through Jesus Christ depends on our turning away from the darkness of our sins, and toward God’s light. To put it another way, as it relates to human relationships, to forgive someone does not mean automatically to trust them. Trust must be re-earned, which begins with words and actions fitting with repentance.

Some people will never do that: they will never be trustworthy. We might continue to offer them opportunities to turn themselves around, but if we’re wise we’ll keep that contained within very careful boundaries, so that if they break trust, they can only cause limited damage. If you steal my car this year and come back the next year telling me you’re a changed man, I might offer to let you borrow my lawn mower, but you’ll need to prove yourself with more than words before I let you borrow my car keys (unless I consider losing my car an acceptable risk). For all its flaws (which are many), one positive purpose of our prison system is to protect the general population from people who cannot be trusted. The man convicted of killing my cousin Jeanette was a multiple offender. No amount of forgiveness could overcome the fact that he shouldn’t be trusted with opportunity to do the same again to someone else. He’s in prison for life, and for good reason.

Forgiveness need not mean setting aside all consequences for an offense or a crime. Dan Allender, in his excellent book Bold Love, speaks of “offering the gift of consequences.” Every parent knows consequences are necessary for their children’s learning and maturation. I was formerly a Human Resource director, and once I had to terminate an employee for a long-term pattern of irresponsibility. He hadn’t really grown up yet. Two or three years later I ran into him, and he thanked me for the wake-up call that had given him. It’s never too late to mature some more. But note that “the gift of consequences” is a gift of love (“Bold Love”). It’s not something we do for ourselves, we do it for the sake of the other, for their good and not for ours. The Bible speaks of reaping what we sow (Galatians 6:7, among other places), and clearly part of the reason for that is for the purpose of learning.

Forgiveness is a process, just as working through the pain of an offense is a process. I have yet to feel and to experience all the loss or hurt that were dealt to me by certain injuries in my past. In some cases it took some time to get to the stage where I could start forgiving, and I think we ought to allow ourselves and each other time to get to that point (though we ought to consider it our goal, even during that processing time, that we will move on to that point). Even then I could only forgive of that pain as much as I had experienced up to that point. I don’t think we can forgive future hurts, even if they are future hurts brought about by past offenses. We can forgive what we have experienced of the hurt so far; and as time passes and we experience more of the continuing pain, we continue to forgive anew.

Now, here’s what I mean by that, practically speaking. Suppose I’m lying awake in bed some night next week, feeling upset and angry again about how a former boss treated me. “Why am I still so upset?” I might ask myself, “I thought I had forgiven him!” In actuality, I may have done so. But if I’m experiencing new hurt over it, then I need to forgive again specifically for that new hurt, which might just be my upset and anger that night.

That’s enough for now. It’s only a beginning. I said above that I was going to start with a biblically-based definition. In reality that’s all I’ve done so far, for all of this has been definitional material. I haven’t mentioned how forgiveness relates to justice, or why it might be a good thing to forgive. That will come in my next post on this topic.

Related: Why Forgive?

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Continuing our exploration of forgiveness and forgiving, today I intend to go straight to the heart of the matter: why should we even consider forgiving—especially those who have done great harm? I will begin with something that may seem to be off the topic, but I think it helps us get to the answer.

I was reading N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus a couple of weeks ago. Wright is an historian of the first century, and it was his intent in the first half of this book to try to get the reader to see Jesus the way his contemporaries would have seen him. For me he succeeded in that, far better than any other author has done. Though Wright himself is a believer in Jesus, I actually experienced a crisis of faith from this book unlike any I’ve had in decades. I was seeing Jesus as he would have looked at the time: a young man, considerably younger than myself or most of my colleagues and friends.

On first view, before observing him in action or hearing him teach, I’m sure I would have viewed him as just some guy on the street, no different than anyone else. As Wright argues, though, he came (among other things) to overthrow the Jewish Temple system. This was a big deal. The Temple was no mere center of a religion. It was the center of Israel in every sense: the center of their relationship with God, the center of their political and social system, the center of their hopes for independence from Rome, the center of their very identity. For the ruling elite it was the seat of their power.

Above all that, it had been instituted by God himself. And this ordinary-looking young man came with the intention of saying, “That was then, this is now, and the days of the Temple are over. I’m throwing all that out and instituting a whole new way of relating to God.”

Here was my crisis of faith: how could we think that one relatively young man, just one guy (as he would have appeared on first impressions), could be the one to do that? How could we think he would do it the way he did, by gathering a tiny group of followers and teaching them? Now, part of that teaching included demonstrations of God’s kingdom breaking in to the world, through miracles of healing, resuscitation of the dead, multiplying food, and so on. That gave him vastly increased credibility, to be sure. But his fundamental approach was to teach and prepare a small group of men and women, and then send them forth with instructions to change the entire world. Does this make sense?

The author, Wright, was not trying to upset my faith; he argues strongly in favor of the Resurrection in the latter part of the book. But nevertheless I had to deal with what seemed to be the basic implausibility of the whole approach. Then last Wednesday evening I saw a music video depicting Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and suddenly it hit me, “It’s not implausible that God would do it this way! This is how it had to be!” Here’s why: We each live our lives one person at a time. We each experience our joys and our pains, our successes and our failures, one person at a time. We all fall short of what we intend to be, what we know we ought to be. We know that every person falls short. But we all fall short one person at a time. We have only our own individual lives to live.

Jesus showed us what it really means to follow God, one person at a time. He showed that the life God calls us to, a life of joy, love, obedience, giving, fruitfulness, and submission to the Father above, could be lived on earth. He was the living demonstration of God’s plan. Just one person; but it took just one person to show us how to live one person’s life; to demonstrate that it could be done, and to show how.

We all fall short. There isn’t a single reader of this blog who hasn’t lied, cheated, stolen, manipulated a relationship, intentionally used words (or worse) to hurt another person, desired to take from another person (their goods, their position in life, their sexuality…), harbored anger or even hatred toward another, wished harm on another. I speak from experience, for I have been guilty of all this and more. Jesus Christ alone was “the man for others” in all integrity, as Bonhoeffer put it, and at the same time fully a man for God. Our own falling short is most visible in our interpersonal relationships. On a deeper level, we also all fail badly in our relationship with God as well. To God’s character of love we say, “I don’t need it.” To his position as Master of his own creation, we say, “Step aside there, God, I’ll take over.” We thumb our noses at his justice. We ignore his omnipresent, omniscient Deity, as if it were an inconsequential thing.

We do violence against both humans and God.

For this, Jesus Christ did more than demonstrate a life lived well. That would only have frustrated us. He also died for our sins, opening the way for God to forgive us, paying the penalty for us that God’s justice demanded. Hanging on the cross, an instrument of slow, torturous death, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

God forgives. I have recently quoted Alexander Solzhenitsyn on a very relevant point:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

We are not all guilty of genocide, but we cannot look at killers and say, “They’re the bad guys, we’re the good guys.” We are all co-participants in a common, fallen humanity. Hutus killed Tutsis in Rwanda. Had history taken a different turn, it could as easily have been Tutsis killing Hutus, and the wise among the Tutsis know that to be true. Had it taken a different turn it could have been Americans or Britons doing the same. Philip Zimbardo’s horrifyingly famous Prison Experiment provided empirical proof of this, in case any were needed.

So why is forgiveness a value? Because we all stand in need of it, first of all. But to receive it and not to give it to others is contradictory. Jesus Christ showed what it means to live one good and godly life, and in so doing showed that each of us in our individual lives fall short. Jesus told a parable about this in Matthew 18:23-35:

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents [a large unit of currency]. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

(Also see further Matthew 6:9-15 and Colossians 3:12-14.) To accept forgiveness from God is to say, “I recognize what grace and mercy are, and that I stand in need of that.” To fail to forgive others is to deny that understanding of grace and mercy.

To forgive even a murderer is to say, “What you have done is horrible. But we are both human beings made of the same stuff, and deep inside, you and I are much the same. I need forgiveness, and you need forgiveness. Knowing this to be true I give you that forgiveness that is mine to offer.” To do any less is to deny the other person’s humanness, or else our own. And it is to deny the truth of our standing before God, from whom we all require forgiveness, and who gives it freely to those who will accept it for what it is: a gift of grace to be accepted on the basis of trust in him, and to be shared with others.

I close this with a note for visitors who read this without having seen my prior entry on this topic, which gave a definition of forgiveness and described (briefly) the process involved in forgiving deep hurts. Without that context, it might seem that I am saying in this entry, “Were you hurt? Well, just get over it!” That previous post will help you see that’s not what I’m trying to say at all; so I urge you to read it along with this post.

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For those who have been following our discussions on Catherine Larson’s As We Forgive, here’s an interview she did with Steve Brown about the book.

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