by Jonas Beiler
“They know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent ... and they know that they will join them in death,” said Gertrude Huntington, a Michigan researcher and expert on children in Amish society.
“The hurt is very great,” Huntington said. “But they don’t balance the hurt with the hate.”
In the aftermath of Monday’s violence, the Amish are looking inward, relying on themselves and their faith, just as they have for centuries...
The Amish have also been reaching out to the family of the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, who committed suicide during the attack.
“The Amish neighbor came that very night, around 9 o’clock in the evening, and offered forgiveness to the family,” Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman said.
“I hope [the Roberts family] stays around here and they’ll have a lot of friends and a lot of support,” Daniel Esh, a fifty-seven-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the attack, said.1
You see, for the Amish, it’s not enough just to forgive. With their forgiveness they offer reconciliation—an invitation to be in a relationship, to be friends. As a counselor, I always remind people that reconciliation is not a requirement for forgiveness. Some people feel that if they are unable to reconcile with the person who has wronged them, they are not practicing forgiveness. Nothing could be further from the truth, as sometimes it’s just too difficult to reconcile with those who have hurt you. But reconciliation can often aid in restoring the emotional health of both the perpetrator and the victim and should at least be attempted whenever it is practical. The Amish almost always offer reconciliation with their forgiveness, as they demonstrated with the Roberts family. But forgiveness was offered not only to Charlie’s family. It was also offered to Charlie, as much as it could be, after his death. This attitude may have been the main source of fascination for the media and those unfamiliar with the Amish, and perhaps the best illustration came from a grandfather in the community:
A grieving grandfather told young relatives not to hate the gunman who killed five girls in an Amish schoolhouse massacre, a pastor said on Wednesday.
“As we were standing next to the body of this thirteen-year-old girl, the grandfather was tutoring the young boys, he was making a point, just saying to the family, ‘We must not think evil of this man,’ ” the Rev. Robert Schenck told CNN.
“It was one of the most touching things I have seen in twenty-five years of Christian ministry.”2
We must not think evil of this man. Not only were the Amish determined not to act out in any way against Charles Roberts or his family, they were determined to make sure their children did not get caught up in the cycle of hate and retribution.
A new generation of Amish was being shown how to live when life seemed so unfair. Hearing of that grandfather modeling forgiveness to those young boys, I thought back to a lesson I had learned from my own father.
Two Amish men walking down the road
CHAPTER NINE
Godly Examples
MY WIFE AND I were spending a few days at a cabin with some other couples in the summer of 1967. My brother Sonny and his new bride, Edna, were there, and another couple, Bob and my sister Anna. We were about a four-hour drive from our homes and having a lot of fun, getting away from normal life and spending time outdoors. There was a small town close by, but the cabin was fairly isolated and rustic—we had running water but no telephone.
Sonny and I were two years apart, and even though we had our own sets of friends we were extremely close. We owned a business together and had both decided to leave the Amish at about the same time. After Anne and I started dating, we enjoyed many great times with Sonny and Edna, hanging out as couples quite a bit. On this trip, Sonny and Edna were with us for most of the week, but they left for home a day early. We didn’t think too much of their early departure from the cabin—I think Sonny needed to go home to do some work.
It was a Monday morning. Bob went down to the store in town to pick up a few things for the cabin, maybe some food, and also to grab a daily paper like he did every morning. Everyone from home knew they could reach us through the telephone at the store. Someone, I think it might have been Bob’s mom, left a message at the store that there was an emergency and we were to call home. Bob must have called his mom while he was there because that’s how he got the news.
He rushed back to the cabin and told us.
Sonny was dead.
I can’t even remember exactly how he said it, what his words were, or what I said back to him. Most of that day—August 7, 1967—and the rest of that week are blurred by too many years. I do remember how I felt: confused and disoriented, much like I would feel nearly ten years later, when Anne, standing in her nightgown outside the clinic, would tell me that Angie was gone.
I don’t remember saying a word during the four hours it took to drive home. The silence was only broken by my occasional outbursts of grief. Anne was sad, too, but I think she was more worried about how I would deal with the loss of my brother. Sonny and I weren’t just brothers; we were each other’s best friend. We hung out together, ran our body shop together, got into a lot of trouble together. I remember wondering how long it had taken the news to get to us, and how strange it was that even after he was dead we had all been sleeping and having a normal day, at least until we got the news.
Once I got home I found out that Sonny had been on his motorcycle when the accident occurred, although to this day we don’t know exactly how it happened. A large truck came around a bend on Mast Road, a quarter-mile from our house. The road was pretty narrow. Sonny came from the other direction, and the truck driver wasn’t sure how it happened, but they collided. Sonny died instantly.
Something else happened instantly. Strange as it may seem, from the very day of Sonny’s death, my grieving parents began contacting that truck driver, checking to see how he was doing. They even invited him to Sonny’s funeral. This is always the first response of the Amish community when a tragedy occurs—they always reach out, concerned for how another person is coping, doing everything they can to ease the person’s grief, even if that person’s actions caused the tragedy.
Like my parents, I never felt angry at the truck driver for what had happened—I guess that’s the Amish upbringing coming through. There’s something about the way they live that refuses to place blame on people for accidents that happen, even tragic accidents. I have heard many Amish people say, after losing a loved one in an accident, not that the person was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that they were in the right place at the right time. God is in control, they say, and it must have been that person’s time to go to heaven.
If I felt angry at anyone, it would have been at Sonny. He was one of those stereotypically reckless guys in their early twenties. Some of the things he got us into scared me to no end. He had wrecked multiple vehicles, gotten into all kinds of trouble, and had been the biggest practical joker I knew. I had a hard time believing that the accident hadn’t been caused by one of his crazy stunts. I don’t know that for a fact, and it may not have been the case at all, yet I couldn’t help but wonder.
Yet it was this wild and crazy approach to life that had made him seem so alive. When he died, I became a different person, in a way, because his recklessness had brought out a side of my personality that would not have come out on its own. I was deeply saddened by his death, and it took me many years to come to grips with his absence. When Anne and I got married, about one year later, I remember leaving the sanctuary of the church with her and walking outside—we were laughing and crying at the same time, so happy to be married, and so sad that Sonny couldn’t be there with us.
During the days and weeks following Sonny’s accident, my parents continued to pursue a friendship with the man who had driven the truck that killed my brother. One evening they took him out to eat, and soon it became an annual tradition for them: my parents would have the man to t
heir house for dinner or take him out to eat, and after they finished their meal they would go by the greenhouse and nursery the man owned. He would allow my parents to pick out any plants or trees they wanted. For years they met this way.
I never got to know the man, but my parents always mentioned it to me when they came home from an evening with him—and they would show me their newest plant or tree. It seemed like the right way to live and the right way to remember Sonny: not with lonely evenings filled with anger and bitterness, but in community, with new friendship, sharing a meal together and relentlessly pursuing reconciliation.
This is also a perfect example of how the Amish culture influences younger generations. I was in my early twenties when Sonny died—if my parents had shown extreme anger or a desire for revenge on the truck driver, it may have steered me down that road as well. But when I saw the way they instantly forgave him it left me with no other inclination but to follow their lead. It’s something I’m extremely grateful for, my Amish roots, and I hope that somehow I can pass on this heritage to my children and grandchildren.
FORGIVENESS. THE Encarta Dictionary defines it as the act of pardoning someone for a mistake or wrongdoing.1 While there are many ways that we can be wronged, there are only two very distinct choices we can make after we are wronged: to forgive or to accuse. In the instance of my own daughter’s death, forgiving my sister-in-law felt less like a choice and more like a natural response, probably because of the nature of my relationship with my sister-in-law, my deep faith, and my having grown up in a culture of forgiveness. I do not recall my parents ever telling me much about forgiveness, but they showed me how it worked by their actions. That’s the Amish way.
Just as important as forgiveness is in helping the Amish move on with their own lives, their decision to forgive can also help those who cause a tragedy recover from their own guilt and pain. This is clearly what happened to a man named Amos, whom I met during the construction of our latest project, the Family Center of Gap. He knew that Anne and I had lost a child, and shared this story with me.
It was May 17, 2004, and Amos was given the day off work by his employer, a local electrical company. One of the perks of working for that particular company was that it gave all of its employees their birthday off, so Amos enjoyed a morning at home and then was off running some errands, just odds and ends, the type of thing anyone does on his day off. We always remember our own birthdays, but something would happen that day that would make Amos wish he could forget it.
Amos was a quiet man with a thin build and dark hair lined with streaks of gray. He had a gentle face, and when he walked from here to there he moved so easily that you could almost miss him, even if he walked right across your path. He rarely talked about that day, but when he did his words flowed together in a slow rhythm, and his voice rolled with a subdued sort of awe, as if he couldn’t believe he had lived through it, as if his talking about it in that way would somehow make it all just a dream.
But it wasn’t a dream. He had stopped by an Amish neighbor’s place to drop off some things. As he pulled into the lane, he never saw the little girl. She was hearing impaired, probably never heard the truck, and darted out in front of it. He didn’t see her at all, only felt something, the smallest of somethings, barely anything. He had no idea that the small bump was a child. Her name was Ruthie.
Amos told me how he had stood in the driveway moments after the event, wondering how it had come to pass. He never stopped wondering why he went on that particular day. It could have been any day. It could have been that weekend, or the weekend before. He could have stopped by any evening after work. But for whatever reason, he chose that day, when Ruthie was playing near the driveway.
Right after the accident happened, the father of that little Amish girl sat there in the driveway beside Amos, holding her in his arms. The sun shone brightly, and Amos found himself on his knees beside the man, shaking. They waited for the ambulance to come, and everything was eerily quiet, especially the small girl in the man’s arms. The father, holding his little girl, who looked like she may have already died, stared straight into Amos’s eyes and spoke words that Amos could barely comprehend.
“You know,” he said firmly, “it’s not your fault. There wasn’t anything you could have done. You didn’t do anything wrong. You are not a bad guy.”
At the time, Amos couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How could any father forgive someone who had just run over his little daughter? It was as if the man was more concerned about Amos than his daughter. Soon the ambulance screamed its way up the drive and came to a quick halt. The paramedics leaped out and swept the little girl away to the hospital, but it was too late. She had died.
After the accident, Amos spoke with the police officer on the scene and then went home. His body felt numb and his brain kept running in a loop, replaying the events over and over again. Pulling into the driveway. Watching, as he always did, for kids who might be playing in the yard. That smallest of bumps. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, and since the house was empty he went to bed, lying in the darkness, trying to sleep. But whenever he closed his eyes, all he saw were scenes from the accident: the little girl lying under his truck, the Amish man’s face full of despair and sadness, the ambulance racing toward them. He tossed and turned in anguish, wondering if he would ever find relief from the pain that gripped his very soul.
When his wife got home and found him in such turmoil, it frightened her and she tried desperately to get him to tell her what was wrong. He alternated between uncontrollable sobs and a complete silence that suffocated his thinking. After a while he found himself sitting in his living room, staring and not saying a word.
But then, in the midst of his anguish, the phone rang. It was the parents of the girl he had run over. They had called to see if he was doing okay. Their toddler had died only hours before, yet they were concerned about how Amos was doing. He told them he was getting by, doing okay, but really he wasn’t. He didn’t know how he could work through the feelings of guilt that seemed to take his breath away. He couldn’t imagine going back to work—who would know about the accident? Who didn’t know? What if someone didn’t talk to him and he didn’t know if they knew? He felt various stages of panic at just the thought of getting back into normal life.
“We’d like you to come to the funeral,” the father told him over the phone, his voice trembling with emotion. “We don’t hold you responsible in any way. It must have just been her time to go.”
To Amos, the very thought of going to the little girl’s funeral was preposterous. He could barely handle sitting in his own living room. There was no way he could deal with attending the funeral. “Let me think about it,” he told the Amish man. “Just let me think about it.”
After hanging up, Amos talked to his wife about what he had just heard on the phone.
“You know,” she said, “you have to do what you know is best.” The more he thought about it, the less he felt like he could go. How could he see that little girl again, this time in her coffin? How could he look those parents in the eyes, knowing what he had taken from them?
Then came the day of the funeral. An old friend of Amos’s stopped by the house to see how he was doing—he was an Amish pastor and had just come from the parents’ house.
“Hi, Amos,” he said. “Are you okay?”
Amos nodded, more of a shrug than anything else.
“I just came from their house—you know the funeral is today. They wanted me to let you know that they would really like for you to be there this afternoon, if you can make it.”
This is an example of what I would describe as the ruthless forgiveness of the Amish. They understand something about forgiveness—that the easiest way to forgive someone who has done something that hurt you is to get to know him, get close to him, because when you get to know someone, you can see how he is human and how badly he is hurting, too. Consider the alternative—isolating yourself from the person who hurt you, a separation tha
t allows you to imagine he is some sort of monster or robot.
After the pastor left, his horse and buggy plodding its way down the drive, Amos’s wife turned to him with sad eyes. She couldn’t bear to see her husband in such pain.
“You know, I really think that might be a sign that we should go to the funeral today.”
They talked about it some more and decided they would go. Amos’s son also went along.
Before the accident, Amos had seen the grandparents of the girl more than the parents, and he knew the grandfather pretty well. Sometimes, when driving his truck, if Amos spotted the grandfather he would pull over and talk to him for a while. Due to his health, the grandfather was being cared for by friends of the family in Maryland when the accident took place and was unable to return for the funeral. At the little girl’s viewing, the grandmother asked Amos if he would drive down to Maryland and talk to her husband—the grandfather knew about the accident, but no one had told him that Amos was the driver.
“I don’t think I can tell him,” Amos said.
The grandmother bowed her head. “But he doesn’t know it’s you. We only told him about the accident—we didn’t tell him that you were driving the truck.”
“Well, I’m terribly sorry,” Amos said, “but you have to tell him. I can’t. I just can’t.”
A few weekends later, after the grandfather had been told that Amos was the one driving the truck, Amos drove down to Maryland to visit him. As much as he dreaded doing it, he knew it was the right thing to do, but as he got closer to the home where the grandfather was staying, he found himself more and more nervous. He wondered how he would feel toward a man, even a good friend, if that man had been responsible for the death of one of his grandchildren. Finally, he arrived at the home of the people who were taking care of the grandfather, knocked on the front door, and was escorted into a room where the older man was lying in bed.
