Commentaries

What we can learn from Amish values and example
 October 11, 2006

 I am not Amish. I like my car. I like the Internet. I have an insurance policy. I like electricity. But I have an Amish rocking chair. I bought the Amish rocker from Jacob Miller, an Amish craftsman in Millersburg, Ohio. We sat on his front porch and rocked awhile. Paid him thirty dollars for the rocker made of maple and hickory by Jacob's hands. That was 30 years ago. In times like this I still sit and rock. I think about Jacob and the Amish-but mostly, I'm thinking about us.

In the aftermath of the school massacre in Pennsylvania, the camera shots of Amish horse-drawn buggies came into our living rooms. While those camera shots drew us closer to the strange world of Amish simplicity - those same camera shots were an invasion of Amish values. The Amish do not use cameras and do not allow themselves to be photographed - to do so, according to Amish values, would be to engage in vanity and pride, the opposites of humility and community. In none of the camera shots did you see an Amish person interviewed on film.

Rooted in the radical wing of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation, the Amish live by their own norms. They are a peaceful community. They shun the culture of individualism, war, and greed on the basis of the teachings of Jesus, which they take at face value. "You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies, but I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

They also believe that the truth sets us free. And that the ends never justify the means. As I sit in Jacob's rocking chair, I long for Amish truthfulness in an election campaign where untruth, distortion, and misrepresentation assissinate the character of one's opponents. Winning is everything. Truth is the victim on the road to Washington. The Amish values of honesty, unvarnished truth, and - when honesty and truth are violated - confession and forgiveness are like a warm light in the a dark night of the soul and nation.

It was this society of simple truth and non-violence that bore such surprising witness to the power of forgiveness as the long line of horses clip-clopped past the home of the man who had killed their children in a one-room schoolhouse. They nodded their heads to the family members who had come outside, also filled with grief because of what their son, their husband, their father had done. They had invited the widow of the killer to join them at the private funeral. And, days later, when the man who had killed their children was also buried, the horses clip-clopped the buggies of 75 of them to his funeral in support of his grieving family.

In times like these, I sometimes turn off the television and rock a while in Jacob Miller's Amish rocking chair. I sit back and give thanks for a more peaceful, humbler, and more honest way to be human.

Gordon Stewart
Shoreview, MN
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