Meg Guillebaud. After the Locusts. Monarch Books. 2005.
After the Locusts is one of the most profound books I’ve ever read on the true cost of forgiveness. The world virtually ignored the 1994 genocide that took place between the Hutus and Tutsis that left around 800,000 people dead. Rwanda is a nation that needed to heal if it is to move beyond this situation. During the genocide, those women that weren’t killed were usually raped—sometimes by neighbors they had known for a lifetime. How do these women return to their communities and continue to live side by side with the very people who did this?
After the Locusts details how Christian organizations are teaching the true meaning of forgiveness as taught in the Bible. Here is just a brief description of what the Christian church in
Rwanda was like after the genocide was over.
… The church, too, was thoroughly demoralised after its failure to stand up for the right. Many churches had been scenes of dreadful massacres; many church leaders were in exile, fearful to return and face implication in those terrible events; and their people felt that they had lost the right to speak words of healing and peace in the dreadful aftermath of the genocide. [Page 9-10.]
Christian groups across Rwanda rose up and felt called to teach the scriptural meaning of repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. Women very painfully were able to confront those who had raped them and learned to truly forgive them. The men who did the raping learned they had to repent of those horrible deeds and then ask forgiveness from the women they had harmed. Both groups learned the meaning of “standing in the gap” with prayer for their respective ethnic groups.
During conferences on forgiving those who had harmed each other, women learned they could nail their pain, agony, and anger to the Cross of Jesus. Very slowly, the people of Rwanda are learning that it is only through Jesus Christ that their nation can be healed.
Recommendation
This book may be about a genocide based of ethnicity of the victims. I believe there is a deeper meaning for this book. The principles being applied to the nation of Rwanda can be applied to every victim of sexual abuse, murders of children or spouses and other family members, or even the woman who aborted her unborn child.
The church needs to study what happened in Rwanda and then study carefully what the scriptures teach about repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We have too many lukewarm Christians today who “repent” but don’t stop their behavior. Others claim they have forgiven the man who raped them but refuse to reconcile with that person. Yes, this is difficult but it is what Christians are supposed to do! I do not believe that we need to be reconciled to non-believers. In Rwanda, too often the perpetrator was a fellow Christian. Is this any different from those ministers, youth pastors, or Priests that have molested children or adults in their congregations?
Reading this book should serve as a very loud wake up call to the church. Rwanda had experienced a nation-wide revival with many turning to Christianity. Still, deeply held hatred of other tribes/ethnic groups allowed this terrible genocide to happen. What does this mean for the churches? Had they failed to teach true repentance and forgiveness? Could this horror happen in the United States between our many ethnic groups? Is there any nation that can truly say it would never happen?
