Amish turn the other cheek in wake of slayings

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

In just about any other community, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands from civic leaders for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims' loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman's family or threatened to sue.

But that's not the Amish way.

As they struggle with the slayings of five of their children in a one-room schoolhouse, the Amish in this Lancaster County village are turning the other cheek, urging forgiveness of the killer and quietly accepting what comes their way as God's will.

"They know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent ... and they know that they will join them in death," said Gertrude Huntington, a Michigan researcher and expert on children in Amish society.

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

Click here for the rest.

Of course, it's just horrible when this sort of thing happens anywhere, and I always wince a bit more these days, myself, since my six year stint in the public schools as a teacher, but this one's got me particularly down. While I think the Amish, with their technophobic and insular ways, and their cultural austerity, are a bit nutty, I also have great admiration for them. They are true pacifists, shunning violence as acceptable behavior under any circumstances. Their communities are very close knit, with mutual support, which gives each of them a sense of personal meaning, value, and purpose. Simply put, they're just good people, showing us all a thing or two about how human beings ought to treat each other. That is, the Amish, unlike so many other American Christians, take Christ's most central principles seriously--they really do seem to love their neighbors as themselves. My god, so many American Christians, so many Americans in general, would be filled with rage and hate and a strong desire for revenge of some sort at this point, but these people have already forgiven the killer and reached out to his family.

God forbid I'm ever put into their current circumstances. I can only hope that I have the inner moral strength to follow their example.

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