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The cover story of January's Christianity Today is not for the faint-hearted. J. Carter Johnson spares few details in describing the utter horror that the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has committed—and still perpetrates—in Uganda. Mass slaughter, rape, torturing children: The LRA may take a preeminent place in the history of human savagery.

Christianity Today published this information hoping that Christians will become aware of the situation in Uganda and intercede through prayer, financial support, and political activism. But the actions of the LRA, like that of previous mass murderers, pose a unique challenge to Christian virtues, particularly forgiveness. The human mind rebels at the thought of forgiving such evil, let alone loving the people responsible for it. What can we do in the face of this horror?

The natural action would be that of Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Holocaust survivor who devoted his life to hunting down and arresting Nazi war criminals. In his autobiographical account, The Sunflower, he describes an almost providential moment. Wiesenthal, still a prisoner in the concentration camps, meets a mortally wounded German soldier. The soldier, gripped with remorse after participating in the slaughter of Jews, begs for Wiesenthal to forgive him. Wiesenthal wavers for some time before finally reaching his decision: He exits the room without saying a word.

This action, however, haunts him for the rest of his life, leading him to publish his account of the event and to openly ask the question: What would you have done? What else could be done, given my experiences? How else can we respond when we look at evil—even repentant evil—straight in the face? The question has haunted more than simply Wiesenthal.

Philosopher Jeffrey G. Murphy, for example, has spilled much ink detailing the "limits" of forgiveness. Writing in opposition to the Christian "party line," Murphy suggests that forgiveness should require repentance, and that the "vindictive passions" (such as anger) have a proper place in maintaining just order. Murphy's concern is as much social and moral as it is psychological and spiritual. And though he worries that the traditional Christian emphasis on forgiveness can hinder our ability to halt present injustices, his concerns are serious ones.

Murphy, however, perhaps overstates the extent to which Christian thinking on forgiveness encourages a "roll over and take it" attitude. Both the late Lewis Smedes and L. Gregory Jones, targets of Murphy's critique, carefully distinguish between the act of forgiveness (releasing feelings of hatred and forgoing the right of revenge) and the act of reconciliation (living in full community with the offender). Smedes cautiously notes, "There can be no reunion without forgiving, but there can be forgiving without reunion." Insisting on forgiveness, even forgiveness of the unrepentant, does not require us to go on as if the victim was never wronged. Rather, this merely requires that the forgiver release any anger and resentment.

Jones goes further, and points out that since you only forgive those who have wronged you, forgiveness implicitly supports the moral order by acknowledging transgression. This is why accepting forgiveness can be as difficult as offering it, because to accept forgiveness means acknowledging that you have committed some wrong that needs to be forgiven. Thus Christians, who should be well aware of the depth of our own wrongdoing and how Jesus needed to reach out to us before we could even properly repent, should be the most inclined to extend such forgiveness to others. We forgive, as we have been forgiven.

Such actions of forgiveness have proven to be some of the most effective Christian witnesses. The recently released movie The End of the Spear—based on the true story of the "Auca martyrs" and the forgiveness their wives and children offered the killers—provides just one example.

It seems ironic, but even during an era when depravity and evil from around the world reach our TVs on a nightly basis, forgiveness is gaining ground. In part thanks to the work of Smedes and others, the topic of "forgiveness studies" is earning credibility as a viable research subject.

One of the discoveries of such research has been the invasive and soul-killing nature of those "vindictive passions." Participants in studies, after truly forgiving those who wronged them, have been liberated from their own depression—even if they didn't know they were suffering from it.

Rwanda is a hopeful test case of the power of forgiveness in the face of atrocity. The churches of that country, frequently complicit in the 1994 genocide there, have taken the lead in the past decade of encouraging (and asking for) forgiveness. Similar to the work of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, churches are striving to liberate the hurting from their rage and pain. We can pray that Uganda, in time, can experience the same revival.

Will Reaves, a recent Wheaton College graduate, works as a freelancer for Christianity Today International and Tyndale House Publishers