My Take On The Amish

Just a forethought- this has very little to do with the recent [tag]school shootings[/tag]. This is a thought that formulated last time I headed up to [tag]Fort Campbell[/tag] and saw the familiar buggy-crossing street signs.

I love the [tag]Amish[/tag]. I love the [tag]Mennonites[/tag], I love the [tag]Hutterites[/tag], and I love their way of life. I think these people live a simplicity that I am simply not capable of. I can write, produce, distribute, and promote a [tag]podcast[/tag] in my dining room, but I couldn’t build a barn or milk a cow. This isn’t about the mythical “simple life” either, though, it’s about car bombs and beheadings.

These clusters of [tag]religious sects[/tag] all share a level of rejection of [tag]modern life[/tag]. The Amish in particular are by definition an exclusionary group, yet they live within the borders of a first-world nation. They separate themselves from a culture that surrounds them, and they do it peacefully.

To put it more personally, they believe that my way of life, in many ways, is wrong, but they aren’t trying to blow up my [tag]Starbucks[/tag] to prove it.

This is why I respect and admire the Amish and similar sects like them here in America. They represent a level of religious [tag]devotion[/tag] coupled with social [tag]tolerance[/tag] that defies logic. Could you imagine an extremely conservative [tag]Muslim[/tag] population living peacefully in the center of a [tag]Jewish[/tag] or [tag]Christian[/tag] state? Because of the Amish, I can.

The Amish are not stupid. They know what lies outside the borders of their communities. And they live the way they choose. They do not form political action committees to legislate their way of life upon others. They do not kidnap strippers and cut their heads off to prove a point. When someone from the outside commits a serious offense against their children, the response is one of unlikely [tag]humility[/tag]:

As we were standing next to the body of this 13-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.”
- Rev. [tag]Robert Schenck[/tag], via [tag]CNN[/tag]

So when I say I love and respect the Amish, it’s not because I bought a quilt that I like. These people give me hope for the future of mankind. If [tag]Christ[/tag] taught humility, these people have learned it. And they can teach others how to live it.

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