Costly Forgiveness

Dieudonné was away at boarding school when his father was murdered. The assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye lit the flame, and the nation slipped into civil war once again. A church leader in the community invited Dieudonné’s father, along with others from his ethnic group, to a meeting which turned out to be a trap. His father was buried in a mass grave.

Every family in Burundi has stories like this. And whilst the nation faces many challenges: food insecurity, crumbling infrastructure, and skyrocketing inflation, to name a few, these issues are symptoms of a deeper problem.

This short film tells what happened next:

Most of us will never have to forgive something as horrific as the murder of a family member, so this story might feel far removed from our experience. But all of us have been, and will continue to be, hurt by others. And we have a choice as to how to respond. “Forgiveness is not a weakness, ” Dieudonné urges us to understand, “when you refuse to forgive somebody, it’s like you give them a remote control. No matter where they are, every time you think about them it hurts vou.“

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