On Oct 2, 2006, Charles Roberts IV, a
milk tanker driver, distraught over the death of his infant daughter, pulled up
to the West Nickel Mines Amish school house in Southern Lancaster County,
walked through the door carrying a semi-automatic pistol and ordered the
teachers out and the boys to carry in lumber from his truck before ordering
them out. He then ordered the ten girls age 13 to 6 on the floor and barricaded
the door. In less than 45 minutes just as the police stormed the schoolhouse
Roberts shot all ten girls, killing five and wounding all the others before
turning the gun on himself. The horror
of this shooting stunned a nation. The Amish, the most devout of the Anabaptist
peace churches seemed the last safe place for children in America. There are no
metal detectors, no phones and on that warm fall day the door was wide open.
The grief of such a tragedy effected
everyone; the close knit Amish community of Georgetown, PA, the police, the
non-Amish, Roberts’s widow, Amy, indeed the entire nation. And yet, within 24
hours, even before the girls had been buried, representatives of the Amish
Community came to the Roberts home to express their forgiveness for Roberts.
Reports of this forgiveness further stunned the country. Most of us found it
the most courageous and powerful testament of faith and humanity they had ever
encountered. More than one editor asked how would our lives been changed if
George W. Bush had forgiven the hijackers attacks on 9/11. Others were not so sanguine. Some
commentators remarked that it was too soon to forgive such a crime. That such forgiveness would only excuse evil
acts. Some complained that the widow was not the one to receive such
forgiveness. Nevertheless, the fact remained that the Amish of southern
Lancaster county had forgiven the crime.
To be sure, they had not forgotten the
tragedy. They had not forgiven his heinous acts, just the man. And the Amish
never asked the families to offer that forgiveness (although every family would
later proclaim they did eventually forgive Roberts). The forgiveness was
offered by Amish leaders in the name of the church community itself. And to be sure, it is one thing to forgive a
killer who has taken his own life, quite another to forgive a killer who
survives.
What the public did not know is that
forgiveness is one of the highest virtues of Amish culture. Taken from the
Gospel of Matthew, wherein Jesus dying on the cross says “Forgive them Father
for they know not what they do” and the sermon on the Mount in which Jesus
commands his followers to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you. In other words, forgiveness for the Amish is rooted, deeply rooted, in
their faith. Amish talk of the mortal prison of vengeance and anger but the
most compelling reason the Amish make such a cardinal virtue out of forgiveness
is quite selfish, as one Amish minister put “How can we be forgiven is we do
not forgive?” the fate of their mortal
souls, the Amish believe, is rooted in forgiving those who trespass against
them.
Forgiveness is not the same thing as a
pardon. And for the Amish, forgiveness
does not mean a criminal should not be punished. In fact, those straying from
the order within the Amish community are forgiven but not always pardoned,
unless they choose to repent for their transgressions. Nonetheless, I offer
this radical form of forgiveness as a beginning to considering the complexity
and the promise of forgiveness in our own lives.
While the Amish root their impulse to
forgive in a faith in God, I contend that we too might consider such an
impulse, not as commanded by scripture, but as compelled by the Unknown God,
Spirit, Force, Humanity that dwells within us; the inherent worth in all. We
may not forgive the acts of evil but we can forgive the actors.
Our theology points towards the circle
of life. When one part of our circle is
damaged, it does no good to commiserate about the damage; this only keeps the
circle broken. Finding the strength to deal with these issues as maturely as
possible, starting with watching what we say and do, goes along way. Often times the best thing we can do for
ourselves after a painful tragedy is to carry on with the mundane and joyful
details of life that remain. This does
not belittle or bury the sorrow but places it where we can work on it best.
Of course, and I want to stress this,
forgiveness is not always immediate nor does it entail forgetting. Women who have been abused may never be able
to forgive their abuser, and they should seek and receive justice for the
crimes committed against them. But as I have known all too often in my own
life, holding hatred keeps us imprisoned, indeed victimized for the rest of our
lives.
The 19th century French Poet Charles
Baudelaire once wrote “Hatred is the most deadly of poisons; it is made of our
blood, our health, our sleep and two-thirds of our love.”
In the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hassana has
ended and we are just about to welcome Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement,
in preparation for which Jews are commanded to forgive those who have wronged
them. Indeed, forgiveness, as complex and heart wrenching as it is, is the only
means to atonement, At- One – Ment with
God, with our integrity as human beings.
With Grace and Grit - John
