Amish Grace, Christian fogiveness and secualr failures...
“In October of 2006, a gunman took hostages in a one-room school-house of an Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. After shooting ten victims, five of whom died, ages seven to thirteen, he killed himself. Within hours after the suicide-murders, members of the Amish community visited the killer’s parents and expressed sympathy for their loss and support for the hard days ahead. When the gunman was buried a few days later, his young widow and her three children were amazed to discover that half those attending the funeral were Amish, who showed nothing but support and concern for the murderer’s family. An entire Christian community faced their suffering with the same peace that Stephen did in Acts 7. The forgiveness and love shown by the Amish community toward the shooter and his family was the talk of the entire country. The way they handled their suffering had been a powerful testimony to the truth of their faith and to the grace and glory of their God…
It is worth noting that the testimony of the Amish to Christ was so powerful that many observers felt the need to mute it. A made-for-TV film about the incident created a fictional character, Ida Graber, an Amish mother of one of the murdered children. In the movie, she is so filled with doubts and anger to God, and so unable to forgive the gunman, that she almost leaves her faith. Those who were actually involved with the Amish after the shootings countered that, despite the deep grief and pain, there was simply no one in the community who had their faith shaken or who could not forgive...
Our secular culture is not likely to produce people who can handle suffering the way the Amish did… We live in an individualistic, consumerisitic society, a society in which we are taught not self-renunciation but self-assertion – that your freedom, interests, and needs must always come first. A culture promoting self-assertion, however will usually produce revenge as a response to suffering…
“Most of us have [therefore] been formed by a culture that nourishes revenge and mocks grace.”…
And that is why peace and love in the face of evil and suffering – whether shown by the Amish in Lancaster, or Stephen in Jerusalem, or Jesus himself on the cross – is one of the greatest testimonies possible to the world of the reality of God, to his glory and his grace.”
~ Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, [Riverhead Books, New York, (2013)], p. 176-77
