Most of us likely recall the 2006 shooting spree by Charles Roberts in an Amish schoolhouse. That part we understand and lament. However, doubtless most people regard what happened after that as a curious anomaly. The Amish forgave Charles Roberts. They set up a fund for the education of his young children. And then they returned to their community to grieve and go on living as they always have. Can their actions be excused as an oddity, unrealistic for normal people?
Catherine Claire Larson doesn’t think so. In her recent book, As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda, she recounts not simply the horrors of the genocide committed by the Hutu against the Tutsi in 1994, when over 500,000 Tutsi were hacked to death by their Hutu neighbors, people they had lived beside, worked with, and played with for years, but the profound reconciliation that is occurring between survivors and killers, many of whom now walk among the family and friends of those they killed. Indeed, it’s not an anomaly but a common feature of Rwandan life.
Based on original interviews and research, both her own and that of Laura Waters Hinson, whose documentary film of the same title inspired the book, Larson tells the stories of both survivors and former killers. What these potent stories reveal is the power of forgiveness to change lives and communities. It’s not easy. She details the struggles that survivors have with feelings of revenge, of the process through which forgiveness comes. She also looks at the killers’ struggles to come to grips with the truth about themselves, to confess and tell the truth, and to forgive themselves, of the day-to-day sadness that lingers but the joy that can break through as people forgive and attempt to make some restitution.
One story Larson tells is of a woman named Rosaria and a man named Saveri, who pummeled Rosaria’s sister, Christine, and her two small children with a spiked club. Saveri is imprisoned, but when he confesses to his crime, he is released to the community. Coming to faith in Christ, he eventually seeks out Rosaria, asking her forgiveness, confessing precisely what he had done.
“I forgive you, said Rosaria softly.”If you have confessed your sin before God and truly changed, then I forgive you.
Saveri searched for words, opened his mouth to speak them, but none came, only tears of relief.
“How can I refuse to forgive you when I did not make you? Your crime” --- she paused, forming her thoughts carefully --- “your crime was against God, who created the people you killed.”
Saveri goes on to build a house for Rosaria and her child, a small measure of restitution for what he had done. That’s just one story of several that Larson recounts.
Interspersed with the stories are short interludes that probe the meaning and process of forgiveness and reconciliation, truth telling and restitution. She moves from atrocities like those experienced in the genocide of Rwanda to something as personal (and yet relative to genocide) minor as having your home broken into. She’s hopeful about the possibilities of reconciliation, and yet sober in her assessment of the human capacity for evil and for rationalizing that evil. She unfailingly finds the hope for healing in the Christian belief that God first forgives us and gives us the power to forgive others.
“Pain does not have to have the last word. Forgiveness can push out the borders of what we believe possible. Reconciliation can offer us a glimpse of the transfigured world to come.”
As We Forgive is a difficult book to read at times, and yet I recommend it. We have all been wounded by some offense against person or property, some more than others. If Rwandans can forgive neighbors who acted like beasts, killing friends and loved ones, perhaps we can forgive each other too. Perhaps we can even forgive ourselves.
