| October 8th, 2006 |
| Practice what you preach? | 05:19 pm |
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In observing what has transpired over the last week — 5 Amish children murdered at a rural school by a nutcase with a gun, an enormous amount of love & compassion poured out to both community and the man who forever changed so many lives — I have a newfound respect for the Amish and thereby some Christians.
1. The Amish are incredibly devout. They are very conservative about their beliefs and their lifestyles. Much more so than Evangelican Christians. But unlike fundamentalist Christians they actually practice what they preach to an admirable degree.
2. In spite of their beliefs they keep to themselves. They don't expect others to conform, or even agree. They don't proselityze, they don't lobby to change laws, they don't even run for public office. They keep to themselves in their own communities and make no attempts to change the communities around them.
3. They have such a respect for life and mercy that they do not wish ill upon those who wrong them, even to such heinous degrees as what we recently saw in this school shooting which lead to the murder of 5 children. Not only do they not seek revenge upon those who transgress against them, in fact, they readily forgive them. What's more, they asked that those who wish to raise money for them because of this tragedy give to the killer's family, he has 3 children. Furthermore, several dozen of them attended the killer's funeral.
All this leads me to ask: Why are Republicans, moreover most Christians in general incapable of this level of compassion, mercy, and tolerance? Conservative Christians who preach so loudly and take such an active role in furthering their beliefs and agendas could really take a lesson from these people. These busy-bodies have lots of ideas as to how others should live their lives, and declaring for all of us what is right and wrong, sin and virtue. Maybe if they spent even half that time worrying about what they are doing in their own lives, including living tolerantly alongside others who disagree with their perspectives on life, our society would be a much happier and healthier place to live.
Another thing that I deeply respect about the Amish is something ALL of us could learn a serious lesson from. They don't just cut all technology out of their lives, they simply have no use for technologies which they feel will not benefit their community. They don't just whine about the evils of TV programs; they choose not to have TVs. They try hard to not let the world around them change them, no matter how confusing or scary it may be. They don't overreact to tragedies, they deal with them. Whereas the majority of citizens, especially in the U.S. would use this tragedy as a justification for harsher penalties, more prisons, more cops, more security guards in schools, metal detectors, school uniforms, and zero tolerance policies, the Amish claim that they are not going to let this change them. They are not going to convert their schools to fortresses. While here in paranoid America, some are already seriously debating whether we should allow teachers to carry guns at school.
The lesson to be learned here is that horrible things can and unfortunately do happen, and they always will. What are we going to do about it? Address the core issues, or just beef up security? It is important not to let tragedies change us and rob us of what made us happy & good. We don't need a contingency plan to deal with every possible tragedy. We lose quality of life when we do. It is better to live openly, as we did before rather than close ourselves off.
For being ultra-conservative religious folk, the Amish really do practice what they preach and they live & let live. Why do other Christians have such a hard time doing this? And why can't the rest of us do it as well?
Feeling like:  contemplative |
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