We do not agree with everything that they believe, but the Amish can teach us a lot ...

There is a striking contrast between the horrific Montreal shooting a few weeks ago and the grotesque murders in Lancaster, PA, days ago:
Kimveer Gill, who coldly shot a girl he had wounded 9 times at Dawson College, brutally killing her (as well as wounding 19 others), was obsessed with violence, warning the world, "Anger and hatred simmers within me." He called himself the "Angel of Death," or online "Fatality666." He described life as a video game, "you have to die sometime" (and of course spent hours playing games with names like Super Columbine Massacre [why on earth are games like that even around and legal??]). He was an avowed atheist, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that he was into Satanism and demonic pacts.
On the other hand, Charles Carl Roberts IV might have seemed like one of the last people to commit such a disgusting crime as he did. According to his wife, he was a great father and husband. He probably held his family very dear. His father was a respectable police officer, and his wife a member of a Christian organization. Roberts himself was homeschooled. He would have seemed to all who knew him like a friendly milkman. There seemed to very little indication of his abuse of two of his almost-toddler female relatives when he was 12, his contemplation of molestation and suicide again, and his raging anger against God for the death of his infant daughter nine years ago.
Yet, in a strange and not-entirely-rational way (in both cases, priceless human lives were lost - both men are guilty of terriblwe crimes before God), I personally feel the most disgust and anger against Roberts over Gill. Both men embraced evil. But Roberts systematically, and psychopathically, selected 10 young Amish (haters of violence) girls, let the rest go free, and apparently planned to abuse each one before finally executing them. Even as I write, I struggle to even imagine how someone could be that evil, that remorseless, that immune and hardened to any trace of pity. How could he look on their tears and not feel relent? How could he plan this in his mind for months before? Just as he showed each of those girls no mercy, so he too will find that there is no mercy under the judgement of God Almighty. "It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God," for those who are stained by evil.

But enough of these men. Turn with me instead to the contrasts we can see between the offended of both shootings. The families of the people shot by Gill have, for the most part, turned down the apologies and condolences of Gill's mother.
But look at the Amish! Not only have their members expressed forgiveness through their grief of the horrendous actions that Roberts took, but they have even gone and reached out to and comforted the family of the man who killed their daughters and granddaughters and nieces and friends. "I hope they stay around here, and they'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support," said one Amish man of the family. Another said, "We want [the world] to understand how rich and deep our friendships and family relationships can be, and while we don't have insurance and we don't enjoy many modern conveniences, we have the richest treasure in the world and that is brotherly love."
What a fantastic attitude in this day and age - to trust God even after the most horrific of tragedies, to forgive the very person who has deliberately and hateful killed five young girls, and to reach out and comfort his family even in their own pain.
Who are these Amish? In centuries past, they stemmed from the Anabaptists (who are also connected with Baptists). They believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, and other key Christian doctrines. They embrace humility and submission to God's will as cardinal virtues. They interpret the Bible very literally when it comes to integration with the world and technology. They prefer instead a life of simplicity, free from "godless" modern culture, taking a monastic approach to life. They have a very structured code of traditions that permeates through all of their culture and everyday life (something that is, on one hand, admirable in this day and age, but also in a very real danger of becoming like the codes of the Pharisees). It is my thought that there are times when they interpret the Bible wrongly, and mistakenly think (as many monks in past ages did) that they can escape from the sins of the world by seperating themselves from it. I fear that increasingly for Amish the temptation will be to depend more and more on the religion of their fathers and their cultural upbringing for salvation, rather than acknowledge their own sinful state and be justified and sanctified through Christ Jesus alone.
But despite this, many Amish are true believers in Christ, and so are my brothers and sisters. And I heartily applaud them for showing both us as Christians and the world as a lost people the meaning of forgiveness. Let us learn from the Amish.