Amish Mourn Gunman In School Rampage
GEORGETOWN, Pa. Dozens of Amish neighbors came out Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage. Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was buried in his wife’s family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few miles from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday. His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him….About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish.
If someone murdered your child, can you imagine a circumstance that would lead you to attend the funeral of your child’s killer? I’m not certain that I could, and I suspect that most of us would agree. This is what makes what some members of Pennsylvania’s Amish community are doing even more admirable. Charles Carl Roberts is a man who by all rights should be reviled as the evil child killer he is. Yet some of the very people whose children were taken from them by Roberts’ actions are displaying forgiveness towards Roberts’ family. It’s something that I have difficulty grasping, but it is something I greatly admire for the selflessness and strength of character displayed by the Amish?
How many of us would be able to do the same thing? How many of us would reach out to the family of a man who killed children, especially if one or more of those children were our own? It’s something most of us would find difficult to grasp; I know I do. There’s a lesson here for all of us, though it’s one that few of us will ever take to heart. It’s one of those things that we’ll never know until (God forbid) we find ourselves in a similar situations. Could we forgive? Let’s hope that we never have to find out.
There is a lesson in here for the large numbers of self-righteous, Evangelical Social Conservative “Christians” out there, and it’s a very simple one. What makes this impressive display of forgiveness by the Amish so impressive is that they are simply LIVING THEIR BELIEFS. Perhaps if more Christians paid attention to this simple fact, this world would be a better and more peaceful place. Whether or not you happen to agree with their lifestyle, you cannot deny that the Amish are living their belief in a loving, compassionate, and forgiving God.
Are you listening, Jerry Falwell? Pat Robertson? Hello??
