As my airplane traveled toward Prison Fellowship's International Council Meeting in South Africa, I was struggling with what bearing witness to the truth meant for me.  It was September 18th, one week after the terrorist attacks on the United States, and I was going to lead a seminar on biblical justice -- justice that restores.  That topic seemed to be a reasonably easy one when we scheduled it a year ago.  But that was before the terrorist attacks.  Could the principles and values of restorative justice guide our thinking and response to crime of that scale?

I thought about the nation I would be visiting – South Africa – a country that had been forced to address the great injustice of apartheid, and the thousands of injustices committed on both sides before apartheid was abandoned.  I remembered that Desmond Tutu had spoken of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as an attempt to apply restorative justice.  He wrote a book about his work as chairman of the TRC.  The title of his book was “No Future Without Forgiveness.” 

Forgiveness!  I had not thought once about forgiveness after the attacks.  I certainly hadn’t heard it mentioned on the news or in the statements of political or religious leaders in America. 

As the plane descended, I kept thinking: Jesus talked about forgiving brothers and sisters, and people who confess (even if they keep doing it over and over).  He forgave the people responsible for his death.  Did he ever talk about forgiving enemies?  Did he ever explicitly say, “Forgive your enemies”?  Nothing came to mind.  The word he used about enemies was “love."

Love!  Forgiveness at least acknowledges an injustice, a wrong.  Love looks beyond that act and focuses on its real interest, the beloved person.   If I couldn’t imagine forgiveness being part of America’s public discourse, I was completely in the dark about what we could say about love.  And yet, how could I talk about biblical justice and ignore the issue?

Even as I thought about that, I realized that my real problem was not what I should teach. It was what I was going to do personally about forgiveness and love.  The commands of Christ are clear.  Love your enemies. Forgive so that your Father will forgive you.  I did not fully understand the implications of obedience, or know exactly how to bear witness to others of that truth.  And yet, there are those commands. 

In the Bible, John tells us that "the thief comes to steal, to kill and to destroy."  That is what these people had done.  They had stolen, killed and destroyed something from the people of the United States – our sense of safety and security. 

The victims of the terrorist attacks were not just those who died and their friends and relatives.  These were personal assaults on the American people as a whole.  They were intended to be. 

What does it mean to love and forgive this kind of offense?  Perhaps, since I did not know the answer, others would teach me.

*****

Two days later, during the seminar on restorative justice, one of the participants asked to make an observation.  Rev. Femi Anthony is the Board Chairperson from PF Sierra Leone, a country in which a nine-year-old civil war continues in spite of a cease-fire signed a year ago.  Under the peace treaty the rebels were to lay down weapons and in return would receive a controversial blanket amnesty for all crimes committed during the nine-year civil war. 

Initially the treaty led to a reduction in abuses and there were only a few incidents of what Human Rights Watch calls the rebel’s “signature atrocity” – limb amputation.  Many people in Sierra Leone have had hands, arms, feet cut off by rebel forces.  Although this horrific practice had slacked off, sexual assaults against women and girls had continued unabated.  Then the peace process collapsed in May, and open conflict resumed again.  Both rebel and government forces have targeted the civilian population in the new fighting.  Once again rebels are committing human rights abuses, including limb amputation. Government forces, unfortunately, are responding in kind in the parts of the country with strong rebel support.

Femi had listened to our presentations on restorative justice programmes.  She said that she was sure that the programmes were very good.  But when she returned to Sierra Leone, she did not know whether she would have a home.  Whether she would even find her family or friends.  The country was so traumatized and destabilized because of the war that she could not see using any of those programmes, not in the near future.  She was calm as she spoke, and there was nothing she said that was critical of what we were doing.  But she was clearly under enormous stress, in a survival mode.  Our brothers and sisters in Sierra Leone live in great peril.

I could not I imagine suggesting that the people of Sierra Leone speak now of forgiveness, of love.  But if not now, when would be the right time?

*****

During a lunch break I met with Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda, recently elected to the PFI Board of Directors.  In 1994, nearly one million people were killed within 100 days in a wave of genocide that swept through that nation.  Most of the victims were members of the Tutsi tribe; most of the offenders were Hutu.

Nearly 120,000 people are held in Rwandan prisons; most of them have been locked up for 5-7 years awaiting trial for genocide-related crimes.  Only 75 defendants have been tried in the seven years since the genocide.  Because the Tutsis made up most of the professional class in Rwanda, few judges or lawyers survived.

The deplorable conditions in Rwanda’s jails and prisons have given rise to increasing international criticism, as has the lengthy delay in bringing those accused of genocide to trial.  Recognizing the injustice of indefinite pre-trial detention, the government has decided on an ambitious but risky plan to create 11,000 community courts. 

These local courts can impose sentences of imprisonment as well as community-based sanctions such as restitution and community service.  This means that prisoners will start re-entering the community after the beginning of the year.

Bishop Rucyahana told me of growing concern that releasing large numbers of prisoners could possibly lead to violence.  He asked whether PFI could help them develop a programme that would help prisoners and their families, victims, and communities prepare for release.  He needs something that can be rolled out across the country before Christmas. 

He was interested in Sycamore Tree, the PF programme that presents prisoners and victims with biblical teaching on confession, forgiveness, repentance, reconciliation and restitution.  PF Rwanda arranges an average of five victim-offender reconciliation meetings each week for prisoners who have converted to Christ and are now willing to confess their crimes.  He was interested in a programme that would lead many more prisoners through this process.

Could we work together to design a course for PF Rwanda volunteers to offer in prisons and communities?  Could it be ready in time for a volunteer training event in mid-December?  It has become urgent that confession and forgiveness be discussed in Rwanda, and there is hardly enough time left.  Could I conceive of a genocide-wracked country talking earlier about how to forgive and how to love enemies?

*****

Elias Jabbour is an Arab who is a Christian.  He is a Palestinian who has Israeli citizenship; in fact, he represented PF Israel at the Council meeting.

Elias is a peacemaker.  He practices a 2000-year-old peacemaking tradition, taught to him by his father, known as sulha.  It is a traditional method of settling disputes between people before they turn into clan conflicts.  The method draws on wise people in communities to help the parties find a way to repair the harm done, restore dignity where it has been undermined, and reach an agreement that will restore peace.

Elias traces his family’s Christian faith to the early days of the church in New Testament times.  His home is in the city that Mary is reputed to have grown up in, and Elias believes that as a boy, Jesus may have played in the street that runs along Elias’ peace center.  His family never left Palestine, even in 1949 when the State of Israel was formed.  Where would he go, he asks.  This is his home, the home of his family for centuries.

I asked Elias to speak at our justice seminar on peacemaking in the face of terror.  He described how difficult it is to live in a region of perpetual conflict and mistrust.  Both sides feel that their very survival as a people depends on winning the struggle.  He finds himself a minority everywhere he turns.  He is an Israeli citizen, but not a Jew.  He is a Palestinian Arab, but not a Moslem.  Elias and other Palestinian Christians find themselves living a precarious and isolated existence.  Even Christian tourists visiting Israel don’t look them up, preferring instead to spend time with Jews.

So what was his message to us about peacemaking in the face of terror?  It was this:  There can be no peace without forgiveness.  Forgiveness is not offered just once, but as many times as necessary.  It is not offered because it is deserved, but because the peacemaker chooses to offer it.  It is not withheld until the “books of justice have been balanced," because when one side balances the books, the other’s books have just been made unbalanced.

When is it time for forgiveness?  Elias says the time for forgiveness comes when we no longer want war.  We forgive because we want peace. Forgiveness is a prerequisite for peace.  Do I want peace?

*****

A week after I returned from South Africa, our church had a guest speaker.  Bishop Mano Rumalshah is currently the leader of a 300-year-old Anglican missionary society based in London.  Before that he was Bishop of Peshawar in his native northwest Pakistan.  When he learned of the terrorist attacks, he decided that he wanted to come to the US to be with us during this time. 

“I have come to touch you, to embrace you, to shed a few tears with you, and to share your grieving,” he said.  And then he startled us all by saying that since it appeared that members of his ethnic community were involved in these acts, he also wanted to offer his profound apologies.  His desire was to stand with us and help in any way he could as we struggled to recover, and to find our path to justice and peace.

What do I say to Bishop Mano?  Can I say that I appreciate his words, and that I have already forgiven those people who have done this?  Can I tell him that I have made the choice to love them?  If I am to bear witness to the truth, I must love and forgive them.  If I am to help others apply restorative justice, I must struggle with how to respond to these acts in ways that reflect love and forgiveness. 

When is it time to forgive?  Let me suggest that we need to forgive when Jesus comes looking for forgiveness.  In other words, we don’t forgive on our own schedule.  We forgive even when we don’t feel like it.  We forgive even when the time doesn’t seem right. 

We are to forgive even when it seems foolish for Christ to expect us to forgive. As foolish as looking for figs on a tree when figs are out of season.

Father, forgive them.

Daniel Van Ness
Vice President, PFI Centre for Justice and Reconciliation