Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The debate about forgiveness
- 2 The case against forgiveness
- 3 A third way?
- 4 The case for forgiveness I: what the psychologists say
- 5 The case for forgiveness II: meeting the objections
- 6 The case for forgiveness III: the positive arguments
- Further reading
- Index
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3 - A third way?
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The debate about forgiveness
- 2 The case against forgiveness
- 3 A third way?
- 4 The case for forgiveness I: what the psychologists say
- 5 The case for forgiveness II: meeting the objections
- 6 The case for forgiveness III: the positive arguments
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
Esther Mujawayo lost hundreds of relatives, including her mother, her father, and her husband, in conditions of unspeakable brutality and horror during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In her writings after the end of the massacres she wrote:
“I don't want to understand [the killers], at least, not yet. I want to proceed step by step: within ten years maybe. I don't want to understand … I say to myself that some people are paid for that, for understanding the killers – politicians, humanitarian staff, right-thinking people … all those whose work is to get into contact with criminals. Myself, I don't need that. I don't want to understand them and I don't want to excuse them. They did it … and I want them to pay for that and not to sleep soundly. …
All those I met in Rwanda, until the survivors working on the field, … never think about forgiveness .… However, all of them work in favour of a reconciliation. Because to reconcile does not mean to forgive. To take up with neighbours again, starting with the ability to greet each other, is important for all the reasons that I have already emphasized: our culture cannot be conceived without these traditions, these rituals.”
(Quoted in Brudholm & Rosoux 2009: 33)The need for forgiveness (if forgiveness is in fact what's needed) arises out of human conflict. The perpetrator's wrongdoing is the locus of that conflict; it may indeed have started it, and it has to be handled in some way or other by the victim.
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- Forgiveness , pp. 42 - 62Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2010
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