There are many paths to forgiveness, although, as Narkissos points out, it is a matter of debate whether forgiveness is the optimal [or even desirable] alternative in every situation.
This woman's soul is without a doubt a very "beautiful" one, but it is one that arguably may have been a co-opted one. The motives of the woman herself are certainly sincere and noble in the extreme. But I would not be at all surprised to learn that hers is also a manipulated soul. Everyone knows that the expression, "I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior" is a canned cliche. It reflects a mindless vacuity. Therefore, it also would not surprise me to learn that this woman had "handlers" [manipulators]. It is the motives of these vipers that are utterly reprehensible. They're barely human. They lured a woman - a woman who has already suffered immensely, almost beyond any endurable limits - away from a her own religion and the anchor of her cultural traditions; and they have forced upon her an alien religion, mode of thought, and world-view. And they did so only for greed - either monetary greed or a greed for power, power over another totally innocent human being. The exact source of their greed is unimportant. It is all one. Whatever the source of their greed, it is disgusting.
Moreover, it is all so utterly needless because this woman already had a wonderful inspiration for forgiveness at her disposal - Buddhism. Buddhism is the path most natural for her. Her culture is a Buddhist culture.
It is very much a question of cultural violence. As if all the napalm and horrid destruction were not enough. I ask a simple question: When the hell will Christians realize that their path is not the only path; that their path is simply one path among many paths? When will Christians relinquish their christo-centric arrogance? When the hell will Christians learn to leave the people of other cultures alone? Even the most cursory and superficial review of history will show Christians - both Catholics and Protestants - to be virtually indistinguishable, in cultural terms, to a horde of soldiers ants or a swarm of locusts. Throughout history, they have left in their wakes vast "swaths" of cultural destruction, upheaval, and waste. They have plundered the land, but what is worse, they have plundered people's souls and spirits. In their colonialist/imperialist zeal, they have decimated entire cultures the world over. Simply stated, Christianity is an ideology that had its source in the Levant and then went westward. Obscenely coupled with imperialism and colonialism, it then went south and back eastward with a vengence. It "infected" North America; South America; Africa; and Asia. It was "planted" in soils in which it never belonged.
How can Christianity itself atone for the destruction and havoc that it has wreaked? How will it ever be able to make amends and "pay back" the people whose lives it has ruined throughout history? There will never be any way for it to do so. All those great civilizations are lost forever.
The only thing that Christianity can do is to extinguish its hubris. What Christians should do is to forget about soul-saving, and concentrate on soul-searching. The Vietnamese woman featured in the article is really a sort of microcosm. That is to say, on a personal level, she is indicative of the exploitive nature of colonialist and neo-imperialist aggression as perpetrated under the cover of Christianity. Far from being a "beautiful" story, hers is really quite a sad one to consider. It seems that some people are not content with plundering people's lands and territories, they insist on enslaving people's spirits.
