In Respect of the Amish

I wrote to a friend of mine that i have been challenged in who I am as a Christian by the actions of the Amish after the murder of the little girls in the schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. I don't know if I could do this. I'll admit I am ambivalent. But, maybe I should get a black hat, buggy, and join the Amish to he a better Christian. Or maybe I could just try to be a better Chrisitan without the hat. Let me have the love and compassion they have. I cried the first time i heard this story about the love of Jesus shown thru them. They, in this simple act, have done more for the cause of Christ than I have in a lifetime. Read the whole article.

"The hurt is very great, but they don't balance the hurt with hate."

WND/TN (Oct 5th, 2006)

In what's being called a stunning example of "the imitation of Christ," WorldNetDaily reports that the Amish community devastated by the cold-blooded murder of five of its schoolgirls is raising money for the killer's family.

Dwight Lefever, a spokesman for the Roberts family, said an Amish neighbor comforted the killer's family and extended forgiveness to them after the shooting, the Associated Press reports.

Barry Wigmore, reporting for the UK's Daily Mail wrote, "One of the few non-Amish guests invited to the funeral of seven-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersole, the first little girl to be buried, was Marie Roberts, the killer's wife. With tears in her eyes, Mrs. Roberts sat in the back of one of the 34 black horse-drawn carriages that were part of the funeral cortege behind Naomi's horse-drawn hearse. On the way from the church to the hilltop cemetery, the procession passed Mrs. Roberts' home where her husband, Charles, loaded up his guns before heading for the little village school on Monday."

Reacting to the Amish outpouring of support for the killer's family, columnist Rod Dreher wrote: "Yesterday on NBC News, I saw an Amish midwife who had helped birth several of the girls murdered by the killer say that they were planning to take food over to his family's house. She said – and I paraphrase closely – "This is possible if you have Christ in your heart."

And Journalist Tom Shachtman, who wrote a book on Amish culture called "Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish," told the New York Times: "This is imitation of Christ at its most naked. If anybody is going to turn the other cheek in our society, it's going to be the Amish. I don't want to denigrate anybody else who says they're imitating Christ, but the Amish walk the walk as much as they talk the talk." Amish expert Gertrude Huntington noted, "They know their children are going to Heaven. They know their children are innocent ... and they know that they will join them in death. The hurt is very great," she told the Associated Press. "But they don't balance the hurt with hate."