Amish Forgiveness
Now that 2006 is almost over, many news organizations and web sites are doing top-10 lists and year-in-review compilations. I just looked through a bunch of them, and it was interesting to remember all the news stories of this year.
I think my favorite inspirational news story of 2006 would have to be the story of the funeral of Charles Carl Roberts. Roberts was the disturbed milkman who killed five young Amish girls and wounded five others in a rampage that may never be entirely understood or explained. He said he was haunted by the memory of molesting two girls many years earlier, but neither of them remember any such incident.
Anyway, the story I liked wasn’t the story of the murders (there are lots of those, unfortunately), but rather the story of how the Amish responded to it. Dozens of the Amish people from the community where those girls had lived attended Roberts’s funeral to comfort his widow and share their love and forgiveness. As an author who has written a book about the Amish explained in an article in the Daily Mail, “they don’t mix hurt with hate.”
OK, I’ll get back to lighthearted silliness in the next post, but I just thought I’d share that story in case anyone hadn’t seen it. I think it’s one of the best examples of truly living up to the Golden Rule that I’ve ever seen.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 at 8:07 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on December 28, 2006 at 9:18 am Tom wrote:
When it happened, I also was touched by the Amish ability to separate the acts of one man and the pain of his family. I was also saddened by the general public’s inability to understand why they’d do this — there was a lot of on-the-street reporting around the country with average people spouting hate on behalf of the Amish. Sad.
On a lighter note, I can’t help but think about the irony of the depth of the technology that had to happen to allow that animated GIF of the Amish buggy to exist.
on December 28, 2006 at 9:27 am Doug wrote:
Yeah, I thought it was cool that there are animated gifs of Amish life on their web site. I just linked to it there.
on December 28, 2006 at 1:02 pm tracy wrote:
the amish have a website?
on December 28, 2006 at 2:32 pm Doug wrote:
Well, if you look close it’s actually the Pennsylvania Dutch Country Welcome Center web site. Apparently they’re trying to encourage tourists to visit and see the Amish.
As I understand it, you couldn’t actually be Amish if you have a web site. I think.