Immaculée's Role In Healing

Role of Belief in Healing Over the course of the book, Immaculée's is faith is expanded in many ways. She does not yet understand that everybody is made in the image and likeness of God and her judgment is clouded by the hatred she feels towards them. Another instance is when she is in the closet and is able to forgive her fellow man for the crimes that he had committed against his own people and opened her heart. Another major turning point in her development is when she has the option to have a firing squad kill any Hutus that she wanted, but was able to realize that God didn't want more killing. And finally, after the genocide that she forgave her friends and neighbors that had killed her family. Faith helped Immaculée understand that

Her judgement is clouded by what she is seeing and is cant yet see that everybody is made in the image and likeness of God. She writes: They’d blindly hurt others without thinking, they’d hurt their Tutsi brothers and sisters, they’d hurt God—and they didn’t understand how badly they were hurting themselves. Their minds had been infected with the evil that had spread across the country, but their souls weren’t evil. Despite their atrocities, they were children of God, and I could forgive a child, although it would not be easy…especially when that child was trying to kill me, (Ilibagiza 94).

This moment of realization turns her entire life upside down and starts the lead her on the path to forgiveness. Although it would take time, she finally understood that God created everybody equal and that they weren't evil despite what they had done. She was able to see that everybody had been misguided and their hearts had been clouded by hatred. Throughout this experience Immaculée is able to fully understand that this is the work of misguided consciences and not the work of God and his