When The World Sees Grace In Action, It Falls Silent

Nelson Mandela, the famous African leader, taught the world a lesson in grace. Being released from prison after twenty-seven years and being elected president of South Africa, he asked his jailer to join him on the inauguration platform. No one would want to offer such an honorable position to a jailer who kept you in prison, Nelson did.

Seeing the natural and common pattern of hate, vengeance and revenge, he decided to set up an official government panel. This panel was headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the name was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The panel was created to deal with people who oppressed one another because of their differences in race and tribe.

For the next two and a half years, the people of South Africa listened to reports of the unusual ways the TRC dealt with crimes and punishments. The rules of the TRC was simple: if a white policeman or army officer voluntarily faced his accusers, confessed his crime and fully acknowledged his guilt, he could not be tried and punished for that crime.

This is NONSENSE – according to many people who were affected by the criminal crimes committed by such offenders.

It is an OBVIOUS INJUSTICE.

But Nelson insisted that the country needed healing even more than it needed justice.

At one hearing, a policeman named Van de Broek recounted an incident where he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned the body to destroy evidence. Eight years later, Broek returned to the very same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as the policeman bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body and ignited it.

The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost her son and husband was given a chance to respond. “What do you want from Mr Van de Broek?” the judge asked. She replied saying that she wanted Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. Broek’s head was down, he nodded with agreement.

Then she added a further request, “Mr Van de Broek took all my family away from me and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr Van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”

Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began to sing “Amazing Grace” as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but Broek did not hear the singing. He had fainted, overwhelmed.

Justice was not done in South Africa that day, nor in the entire country during months of agonizing procedures of the TRC. Something beyond justice took place. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” said Paul.

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu understood that evil can only be overcome by one response. Revenge gives birth to more evil. Justice punishes evil.

Only grace can overcome evil, absorbing it and not allowing it to go any further.

Jesus Christ showed this pattern of otherworldly grace in his life and death.

When the world sees grace in action, it falls silent.



*This post was inspired by one of Philip Yancey’s writings in his book, Rumours of Another World.