One of the most memorable...
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One of the most memorable examples of reconciliation in modern times occurred in a little Pennsylvania Dutch village known as Nickel Mines, in October 2006. A deranged man, a neighbor from outside the Amish community, walked into a one-room schoolhouse with a gun, and took a group of children hostage. A little while later, five girls were dead: shot, execution-style, in the back of the head. Five others were wounded. The gunman himself committed suicide.
It was an unimaginable trauma, for any community, but especially for a deeply religious, non-violent people like the Amish. The world watched, to see how the elders of this radically pacifist community would respond.
What the world saw was a remarkable Christian witness. One of the first things the Amish did was reach out to the gunman's widow and her children. They brought them food. They raised money to help them pay their bills (for, on top of everything else, that family had lost its principal wage-earner). "We have to forgive," an Amish woman told a reporter for the Reuters news agency, matter-of-factly. "We have to forgive him in order for God to forgive us."
Ten days after the shootings, a bulldozer crashed through the walls of the Amish schoolhouse at Nickel Mines. Bulldozers aren't exactly the Amish's style. They don't use that kind of machinery -- and, besides, they're a thrifty bunch. When demolishing a building, they typically descend upon it with nail-pullers and crowbars, laboriously salvaging as much lumber as they can. It's the opposite of one of their famous barn-raisings. Yet, on this occasion, the Amish hired an outside, non-Amish contractor to drive his bulldozer through the building, reducing it to splinters. They wanted the world to see that they were absolutely determined to forgive and forget: and quickly. To them, that public witness was well worth the cost of hiring the bulldozer and giving up the value of the scrap lumber.
It was an unimaginable trauma, for any community, but especially for a deeply religious, non-violent people like the Amish. The world watched, to see how the elders of this radically pacifist community would respond.
What the world saw was a remarkable Christian witness. One of the first things the Amish did was reach out to the gunman's widow and her children. They brought them food. They raised money to help them pay their bills (for, on top of everything else, that family had lost its principal wage-earner). "We have to forgive," an Amish woman told a reporter for the Reuters news agency, matter-of-factly. "We have to forgive him in order for God to forgive us."
Ten days after the shootings, a bulldozer crashed through the walls of the Amish schoolhouse at Nickel Mines. Bulldozers aren't exactly the Amish's style. They don't use that kind of machinery -- and, besides, they're a thrifty bunch. When demolishing a building, they typically descend upon it with nail-pullers and crowbars, laboriously salvaging as much lumber as they can. It's the opposite of one of their famous barn-raisings. Yet, on this occasion, the Amish hired an outside, non-Amish contractor to drive his bulldozer through the building, reducing it to splinters. They wanted the world to see that they were absolutely determined to forgive and forget: and quickly. To them, that public witness was well worth the cost of hiring the bulldozer and giving up the value of the scrap lumber.
