Disciple: More than Just Forgiveness

The true definition of reconciliation

By By Blythe Riggan

“Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?...The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.”
                    - Harold S. Kushner

April 7, 1994: the beginning of the horrific Rwandan genocide. I was an infant, barely two months old, so the events occurring across the ocean had little effect on my comfortable world. In the span of three months, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed, as the Hutu majority was called upon to rid the country of the Tutsi minority. Neighbors killed neighbors, friends killed friends, and in some cases, family killed family.

In the summer of 2013, I traveled to Rwanda with The Nyanya Project, a nonprofit that empowers African grandmothers raising AIDS-orphaned grandchildren. In addition to spending time with those remarkable women and hearing about their farming projects and survival stories, I had the opportunity to learn about and visit key sites of the genocide that devastated this country nearly 20 years ago.

I had the privilege of dining with a couple at the Hotel des Milles Collines, the location made famous in the film “Hotel Rwanda.” I heard their amazing tale of surviving the genocide by seeking refuge in that very hotel for three weeks. I toured the Kigali Memorial Centre, a powerful monument to the horrific loss of life, and visited the Nyamata church, where the clothes, possessions, and skulls of victims remain. But perhaps the most powerful of all was the time spent in a reconciliation village.

Reconciliation is the act of re-establishing a close relationship. Before my time in Rwanda, I likened it to the act of forgiveness. We forgive others for their trespasses just as God forgives us for our own. We all make mistakes, we hope for forgiveness, but do we strive for reconciliation?

As of December 2013, there are six Reconciliation Villages in Rwanda funded by Prison Fellowship International, a Christian nonprofit, along with several partner organizations. Residents are permitted to live in the village under the condition that survivors and perpetrators of the genocide agree to coexist peacefully. The founding members of the community vote on who can live there, giving preference to the most vulnerable families in terms of poverty or illness. Despite their background, the villagers farm together and care for one another as true neighbors.

A widowed Tutsi mother whose family was killed during the genocide explained a dynamic of her village life: Whenever she goes to purchase groceries, she leaves her young children with her neighbor, a Hutu man who confirmed he was a perpetrator of the genocide. She trusts her children with him and purchases groceries for him as a sign of appreciation. Together they have reached a point beyond forgiveness; following the horror, trust and reconciliation were the only means to move forward.

After my time in Rwanda, I feel that reconciliation means not only forgiving someone for his sins, but agreeing to love him, respect him, and commune with him at God’s table. Reconciliation does not allow for superiority or judgment; it establishes that we are all equal because we all sin, we all love, and we are all part of God’s mysterious plan.  

Blythe Riggan is a student at Wake Forest University.