The Amish are usually right.
OCT 2, 2007
One year ago today, a shooter entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa., dismissed all but 10 girls, and fired at them execution-style, killing five before shooting himself.
Within hours, the Amish community forgave the killer and his family. News of the instant forgiveness stunned the outside world – almost as much as the incident itself did. Many pundits lauded the Amish, but others worried that hasty forgiveness was emotionally unhealthy.
In dozens of interviews with Amish people since the tragedy, I discovered that the Amish approach to forgiveness is indeed quick and unconventional – but also inspirational to the rest of us.
There’s more…
Continue reading: Why the Amish forgive so quickly by Donald B. Kraybill
One thing in the article that is somewhat confusing… the author seems to suggest that the Amish compulsion to forgive is somehow different than the command given by Jesus in Luke 6:37.
Stop judging others, and you will not be judged. Stop criticizing others, or it will all come back on you. If you forgive others, you will be forgiven.
The truth is… that command is for everyone… not just the Amish. It is just that they seem to be the ones that remember it and do it.
The writer also said this:
Amish faith is grounded in the teachings of Jesus to love enemies, reject revenge, and leave vengeance in the hands of God.
Why did he write “Amish faith” instead of “Christian faith”?
I’m no theologian… but I’ve gotta wonder if it is because most Christians are “Christians in name only” and their decisions and lifestyles don’t match all that well with what should be BASIC CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of having to explain to Buddhists, Daoists, and Atheists that the examples they cite of Christian behavior are *usually* from those who don’t actually seem to be genuinely following Jesus’ teachings. I’m not talking about when people make mistakes… but lifestyles and teaching that is often OPPOSITE of basic Christian doctrine.
Make fun of the Amish if you want to… but I’m going to keep going to their well… seeking wisdom… and finding it.
A Well In Nazareth
(photo source)
1 response so far ↓
1 Michael Turton // Nov 1, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of having to explain to Buddhists, Daoists, and Atheists that the examples they cite of Christian behavior are *usually* from those who don’t actually seem to be genuinely following Jesus’ teachings.
That’s what the people cited in examples that atheists, Buddhists, and Daoists give always say. This generates sentences among atheists, Buddhists, and Daoists that run…
“I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of Christians saying that other Christians aren’t really Christians, and they are the only real ones.”
AFAIK anyone who labels themselves a Christian is one, since there doesn’t seem to be (a) a viable method for determining what a real Christian is and (b) a viable methodology for determining how much of what Jesus actually said is in the 20 or so extant gospels, and what got added by tradition (and what isn’t there — it’s obvious that things have been deleted even in the few gospels that we have). Hence the ‘following Jesus teachings’ approach to defining Christian won’t work. Got one that will?
As for the Amish, they probably “forgave” so that the media would go away and leave them alone to beat their wives and molest their children in peace (the killer forgiven was a child rapist), and ostracize those who would help them. My father spent a career at a Uni in Pa performing speech therapy on Amish kids in secret for fear of shunning, and one of his grad students, Amish, was shunned for learning that devilish knowledge about how to provide therapy for people who have trouble talking. So Amish wisdom, Scott, really amounts to control, control, control –
“This approach [forgiveness] is rooted in the Amish notion of Gelassenheit, or submission. Church members abide by their clergymen; children obey their parents; sisters mind their brothers; and wives defer to their husbands (divorce is taboo). With each act of submission, the Amish follow the lesson of Jesus when he died on the cross rather than resist his adversaries.”
Note that the Amish construe “submission” as “obediance to the established order” and have missed the point that Jesus died on the cross, in some interpretations, to call into question the established order … the Amish to me are simply another object lesson in the bitter reality that when power is not publicly accountable it will be privately abused.
Michael
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