Finding a Path to Forgiveness

“I cannot do this. It won’t work.”

Fuad was serious about pursuing reconciliation with his father. But he could not see a path forward until he attended a Forgiveness Seminar hosted by a team of local peacemakers. He learned about the seminar through word of mouth, and felt compelled to come.

When he arrived, Fuad was warmly welcomed by a group of twenty others who also desired reconciliation in their lives—with family, friends and neighbors. So, he came back to the next seminar and learned about a five-step path to making peace. Then different group members shared testimonies about how they applied these steps and they were amazed by the results.

Fuad was moved by these stories. The steps to forgiveness were clear to understand and easy to remember. But he still knew that pursuing this path would be difficult.

“You can do this. Begin with the first step,” counseled Elvin, one of the group facilitators. After much encouragement from group leaders, Fuad resolved in his heart to reach out to his father.

The next week at the Forgiveness Seminar, Fuad came with a most remarkable story. He did just as he planned—he attempted the firststep of the forgiveness process. Much to his amazement, he learned that his father had long desired to have reconciliation too—but didn’t know what to do.

So when Fuad took the first step, his father took the next step. They now have restored peace between them.

“These steps really work!”

Later he confided with one of the group leaders that he was really interested in learning about Isa (Jesus). Now Fuad is meeting almost daily with a local pastor, who is reading through the

Scriptures with him, and teaching him the way of spiritual peace through Isa Mesih (Jesus Christ).

Forgiveness Seminars initially began as a follow-up opportunity for people who viewed Bagishla Meni (which means, ‘Forgive Me’), a short film produced with local talent. The film was first released on YouTube as a series of four videos, and later premiered at a public screening in the capital for the Novruz holiday in March, 2017. The film tells the story of a young man who faces conflicts in several relationships as he makes difficult choices about his future. After hitting rock-bottom in his life, he finds help from a trusted uncle who shares a story about forgiveness from the Injil (New Testament).

The film in combination with social media engagement have been a means of connecting people to Forgiveness Seminars. For the past year, over 300 people have come to learn how they can pursue peace and reconciliation through these participatory discussion groups. While the key leaders are followers of Isa Mesih, emerging leaders are rising up from seminar participants, which include people who identify as Muslims and agnostics. The principles of reconciliation and the idea of a mediator are Scripture-based, but the seminars are not presented as religious teaching. Rather, they are presented as practical steps that can be clearly understood, easily remembered, and realistically applied.  In this discussion-driven environment, non-believers, Muslims and followers of Isa Mesih are simply making friends with one another. A social movement is being born for the church to take a part in. May the peacemaker Immanuel bring them true peace!

By Eurasia staff writer

Download images from this story

05/2025 Global

Special Report - May 2025

.

Read more

05/2025 Global

‘We’ve come very far, very fast’

A tech observer outlines what AI will mean soon for workplaces and ministry

Read more

Global

Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI

Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities.  In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on.  On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot.  This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them.   Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.  

Read more