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I was able to hear Bishop John at the National pastor's Convention in San Diego (2008), and as well spent a half hour with him talking about forgiveness. I had been through some difficult times and was having to deal with issues of forgiveness, and I figured that a leader of Rwanda who lived through the genocide would know more than I about that topic. I was right.

Bishop John's main words to me were, “forgiveness is not magical; it is miraculous.” The only way to forgive others, or to forgive yourself, is to love Jesus and allow him to do his work in your heart. This is the main theme throughout the book.

The book is a painful walk through the history that lead up to the genocide, excruciating descriptions of the depth of human sin, and encouraging descriptions of the process of forgiveness, reconciliation, and restitution. John's goal is that the world see what has happened in Rwanda so that the same forgiveness can be experienced elsewhere. “If a woman who was raped and beaten and forced to watch as her husband and children were tortured and killed before her very eyes can forgive in the name of Jesus Christ those who did such a horrible thing, then any victim, anywhere, can forgive the same way” (221).

The majority of the book deals with the genocide. John is very deliberate at removing false assumptions and the horrific propaganda lies that were deliberately spread. The Hutu and Tutsi people are not two different clans with a history of tribal warfare. They worship the same ancestors, speak the same language, share the same customs, intermarry, work and play side-by-side. The attempt to divide was the ploy of colonial powers vying for control.

The actual description of the horrors were painful to read. Rwandans with machetes hacked to death over 800,000 of their wives, children, parents, neighbors and friends, and they did this at a rate of 5 times the speed of the Nazi death camps. Pastors luring Tutsis into their church and then bulldozing the church. Nuns hiding people and then soaking them with gasoline and lighting them on fire. It became so painful to read that I wanted to stop, but as a Christian I thought I should continue to expose myself to the depth that demonic evil can drop and learn to feel the pain. I was unable to read the last 15 pages. If you want to know what hell will be like, read this book. Read how people can do things to other people, people they know and have relationships with. Read this book if you need to understand the deceptive power of sin, how it spreads its lies like a web, catching every common sense though in its strands.

And read this book if you have ever said, “It can't get worse.” It can. After the genocide was over and the perpetrators and many victims fled to the refugee camps, the war continued in the camps, the soldiers stealing the support given by the international community (finally), and continued to amass their own wealth and kill and mutilate those without protection.

The subtitle of the book is, “Finding Forgiveness Amidst a Pile of Bones.” My only criticis of the book is that I wish Bishop John had spent more time talking about the process of offering and accepting forgiveness, and the fine line between vengeance and necessary consequences. He tells how it happened, but I would like to hear him interact more on a theological level.

One thing that was interesting is the amount of time he spent on not the victim coming to forgive the killers, but the killers learning to forgive themselves, and then offer their forgiveness in a meaningful way to the relatives of the victims. “'How can I ask for forgiveness,' asked a prison in Ruhengeri, 'when there were so many who begged me for mercy during the genocide, and I ignored them?'”

One thing that you should never say after this book is that we should just ignore sin, get along, and everything will be okay – the churchy way of dealing with sin. The sin must be acknowledged and confessed, and then offered to the victim with the request for forgiveness.

Part of Bishop John's reconciliation process is in getting the killers and those related to the victims to get together. It is soundly biblical and well worth implementation in our churches. I wonder how many churches would split if both sides were forced to side down and walk through the biblical process?

But Bishop John assures us that if we hold on to our anger, justifying ourselves, demanding vengeance, then the only people ultimately that are harmed are ourselves. There is no magical solution to forgiveness. But there is Jesus, who forgave those who were killing him while he was still in the midst of the pain on the cross, and through his miraculous power we can too forgive.

“There cannot be any cruelty greater than the cruelty that was in Rwanda, and therefore there is no grace greater than the grace that is in Rwanda.” May we all learn the lessons of Rwanda.

		Purchase from ChristianBooks.com for $14.99 (as of 3.18.2008)
		Purchase from Amazon.com for $13.59 (as of 3.18.2008)

Publisher's description

In 1994, at least 1,117,000 innocent people were massacred in a horrible genocide in Rwanda. Here, Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana recounts the story of this atrocity and the events leading up to it. But this book is also the story of the new Rwanda-a country that has turned to God-and is being blessed. As his country descended into the madness of genocide, Rucyahana saw friends and family murdered. He survived to become a voice for harmony and healing-with a mission to rebuild his beloved Rwanda and to bring a ministry of reconciliation and God's love to the whole world. (Graphic content.)