Rod Dreher is a writer
and senior editor and blogger at The American
Conservative and author of several books on religion,
politics, film and culture. The views expressed here are his own.
Is there any place on earth that more bespeaks peace,
restfulness and sanctuary from the demons of modern life than a one-room Amish
schoolhouse? That fact is no doubt why so many of us felt defiled – there is no
more precise word – by news of the mass murders that took place there. If you’re not safe in an Amish schoolhouse
... And yet, as unspeakable as those killings were, they were not the most
shocking news to come out of Lancaster County.
No, that would be the revelation that the Amish community,
which buried five of its little girls, collected money to help the widow and
children of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the man who executed their children before
taking his own life. A serene Amish midwife told NBC News that this is normal for them. It’s what Jesus would have
them do.
“This is imitation of Christ at its most naked,” journalist
Tom Shachtman, who has chronicled Amish life, told The New York Times. “If anybody is going to turn the other cheek in
our society, it’s going to be the Amish. I don’t want to denigrate anybody else
who says they’re imitating Christ, but the Amish walk the walk as much as they
talk the talk.”
I don’t know about you, but that kind of faith is beyond
comprehension. I’m the kind of guy who will curse under my breath at the jerk
who cuts me off in traffic on the way home from church. And look at those
humble farmers, putting Christians like me to shame.
It is not that the Amish are Anabaptist hobbits, living a
pure pastoral life uncorrupted by the evils of modernity. So much of the
coverage of the massacre dwelled on the “innocence lost” aspect, but I doubt
that the Amish would agree. They have their own sins and tragedies. Nobody who
lives in a small town can live under the illusion that it is a haven from evil.
To paraphrase gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and
evil does not run along the boundaries of Lancaster County, but through every
human heart.
What sets hearts apart is how they deal with sins and
tragedies. In his suicide note, Mr. Roberts said one reason he did what he did
was out of anger at God for the death of his infant daughter in 1997. Wouldn’t
any parent wonder why God allowed that to happen? Mr. Roberts held onto his
hatred, purifying it under pressure until it exploded in an act of infamy. That’s
one way to deal with anger.
Another is the Amish way. If Mr. Roberts’ rage at God over
the death of his baby girl was in some sense understandable, how much more
comprehensible would be the rage of those Amish mothers and fathers whose
children perished by his hand? Had my child suffered and died that way, I
cannot imagine what would have become of me, for all my pretenses of piety. And
yet, the Amish do not rage. They do not return evil for evil. In fact, they
embody peace and love beyond all human understanding.
In our time, religion makes the front pages usually in the
ghastliest ways. In the name of God, the faithful fly planes into buildings,
blow themselves up to murder the innocent, burn down rival houses of worship,
insult and condemn and cry out to heaven for vengeance. The wicked Rev. Fred
Phelps and his crazy brood of fundamentalist vipers even planned to protest at
the Amish children’s funeral, until Dallas-based radio talker Mike Gallagher,
bless him, gave them an hour of his program if they would only let those poor
people bury their dead in peace.
But sometimes, faith helps ordinary men and women do the
humanly impossible: to forgive, to love, to heal and to redeem. It makes no
sense. It is the most sensible thing in the world. The Amish turned the
occasion of spectacular evil into a bright witness to hope. Despite everything,
a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
