Thoughts On Forgiveness

Dear Friends,

Few things in life are as difficult as forgiving someone who has hurt us deeply. It’s surely even harder to forgive someone who has hurt those we love – especially when it is done intentionally and with great malice. In fact, when I read the story that follows, I wondered, “How could she do it? If I had been her, would I have been able to forgive him?” I pray I will never have to find out.

In sharing this I offer the sometimes-used warning, “Not for the faint of heart.” I include the unsettling parts of her story that are snapshots of human evil, because to edit them out would lessen the degree of grace we see this woman bestow. It is a true story, and is entitled, “Releasing the Poison.”

I came across it in a book entitled, “Everybody Needs to Forgive Somebody – 11 Stories of Real People Who Discovered the Underrated Power of Grace,” by Allen R. Hunt. Yet, he states that the story itself is taken from Philip Yancey’s book, “Rumors of Another World.” Brace yourself… to be amazed.

“Nelson Mandela taught the world about the power of grace. After emerging from twenty-seven years in prison and being elected the new president of South Africa, his first act was to invite his jailor to join him on the presidential inauguration platform. Mandela then appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head an official government panel with the intimidating name, the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (TRC), to try to bring the racially fractured nation together. Mandela wanted to diffuse the natural human pattern of revenge that he had seen firsthand in prison, and in so many countries where one race or tribe had taken control from another.

For two and a half years, South Africans listened to reports of atrocities from the TRC hearings. The TRC rules were simple: If a white policeman or army officer voluntarily faced his accusers, confessed his crime, and fully acknowledged his guilt, he could not be tried and punished for his crime. South African hard-liners grumbled about the obvious injustice of letting criminals go free. Mandela, however, insisted that the country needed healing more than it needed justice. He chose to focus on that radical agenda of healing, a new door that could be opened only with the key of forgiveness. Everybody needs to forgive somebody, and that truth was never more apparent than in South Africa.

At one hearing, a policeman named van de Broek shared how he and other officers had entered a village and shot an eighteen-year-old boy. After the murder, they burned the boy’s body, turning it on the fire like a piece of barbeque meat in order to destroy the evidence. Eight years later, van de Broek returned to the same house and this time seized the boy’s father. The man’s wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it.

The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son, and then her husband, listened to Officer van de Broek’s confession. She was given a chance to respond. ‘What do you want from Mr. van de Broek?’ the judge asked. The woman stood. She said she first wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they had burned son’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. After all, that dust was all she had left of her family. His head down, the policeman nodded in agreement. Then she added a second request: ‘Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me,’ she said, ‘and I still have a lot of love left to give. Twice a month I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.’

Spontaneously, some of the observers who gathered in the courtroom began singing, ‘Amazing Grace’ as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand. Officer van de Broek did not hear the words of the hymn. He had fainted, completely overwhelmed.

Van de Broek had entered the courtroom that day locked in the tiny prison cell of his painful atrocities. Rather than revealing a thirst for vengeance, the widow had instead extended the key that would unlock a new life. Forgiveness. Everybody needs to forgive somebody. In this case, an entire nation needed to forgive a racially violent past. And one woman needed to forgive a man who had taken from her the most beautiful parts of her life. Very simply, she chose to overcome van de Broek’s evil acts with her own act of love. Rather than holding on to the poison of those murders, the woman chose to release it. Rather than deflecting the poison of hate back into the face of van de Broek, she reflected love into his heart.

Because of her, everyone in that room, including the man who had crushed her family, was changed by grace.”

It’s a challenging account to say the least. And I simply finish by putting before you the thought that struck me when I first read it: “How could she do it? If you had been her, would you have been able to forgive him?” Are there some things we should not forgive? Are there some things God should not forgive – even if the perpetrator is truly repentant?

Just some food for thought, Pastor Jeff