Malcom Gladwell, longtime staff writer for the New Yorker, is known for a series of celebrated bestsellers.
They include The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers.
Gladwell has a knack for uncovering interesting stories in unexpected places, and demonstrating how things we expect to find often turn out to be surprisingly different.
He grew up a Mennonite – a small branch of Christianity known for its gentleness and pacifism. But Gladwell’s faith evaporated when he moved to New York, a city not known for bolstering gentleness and pacifism.
Then, 11 years ago, he visited the home of Cliff and Wilma Derksen, a Mennonite couple living in Winnipeg, Canada.
In 1984 their daughter Candace had been kidnapped by a sexual predator. The largest manhunt in the city’s history followed. Police ultimately found the 13-year-old’s frozen body in a shed. Her hands and feet had been bound.
After the funeral, Cliff made a statement at a press conference. “We would like to know who the person or persons are so we could share, hopefully, a love that seems to be missing in these people’s lives.”
Wilma added: “I can’t say at this point I forgive this person.” Everyone noticed that she had stressed the words at this point. “We have all done something dreadful in our lives, or have felt the urge to.”
No one could imagine grieving parents saying such things.
Twenty-two years went by before Candace’s murderer was brought to justice. Wilma writes, “Little did I know that the word forgiveness would haunt me for the next 30 years – prod me, guide me, heal me, label me, enlighten me, imprison me, free me, and in the end define me.”
Gladwell, who was researching his book David and Goliath, wanted to know how this couple had been able to avoid falling into the abyss of rage and revenge. He writes, “Something happened to me when I sat in Wilma Derksen’s garden.
“It is one thing to read in a history book about people empowered by their faith. But it is quite another to meet an otherwise very ordinary person, in the backyard of a very ordinary house, who has managed to do something utterly extraordinary.
“Their daughter was murdered. And the first thing the Derksens did was to stand up at a press conference and talk about the path to forgiveness.”
He adds, “Maybe we have difficulty seeing the weapons of the spirit because we don’t know where to look, or because we are distracted by the louder claims of material advantage.
“But I’ve seen them now, and I will never be the same.”
An horrific act of evil, calculated to bring little more than pain and sorrow into the world, instead accomplished something else.
Redeemed by the courage of a hurting mom and dad trying to find their way forward, it brought Malcom Gladwell back to faith.
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