To regret … if only? What happens to the horror at the absence of someone you love? Your relationship with that person was a part of your life and now that part of you has been taken away. You are less. Can this radical obedience fulfill these needs? I don’t think so. You can only deal with them by suppressing them in some way, and I think this is actually violence done to yourself.”
Professor McClay’s doubts are intensified by his experience as a parent. “I couldn’t help but be moved by the moral grandeur of their willingness to forgiven the gunman who was dead and to reach out with love and compassion to his family with no desire for vengeance or punitive damages. But, at the same time, as a parent, I was appalled. There is a kind of ferocity that rises up when someone does something to children, an intensity with the parental bond that, were it to happen to me, I wonder whether I could even let the matter take its course through the courts of law. I can’t imagine letting go of those feelings, and I’m not sure that I would respect someone I knew who yielded their anger so completely. To renounce those feelings, to simply have that be a floor on which the elevator never stops on the way to the high ground of forgiveness, seems to me almost inhuman.”
Far away in South Africa, a country that had gone through brutal years of apartheid, the event transfixed some of its citizens. Pumla Goboda-Madikizela, an eminent psychologist and one of the architects of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, raised similar questions: “I worry that at a deep psychological level something has not been addressed. I am not judging the act of forgiveness as being improper or immoral, of course not. The TRC was created with the hope that reconciliation is possible even after horrific, seemingly unforgivable acts. But I am reflecting on this with my psychological mind. There is a great deal of pain that these parents are living with, but such pain appears silenced even before it has been felt. An important part of the journey towards forgiveness requires being in touch with that pain. Also—and I am speaking now as a believer—when the forgiveness is so quick, it almost borders on assuming the power of God, casting ourselves in God’s image so that we do not allow the weakness of being human to overwhelm us. Instead, what we really need is the grace from God to empower us so that we can rise up from our pain and then reach out with forgiveness.”
What is it that makes this “violence done to oneself” bearable or, as Ray Gingerich describes it, “this forgiving without really having allowed ourselves time to work through the pain?” For Ray, it is the value of community in Amish life. “The Amish can do it because they don’t have to be alone when the tough days come and the company doesn’t drop by anymore, or when friends don’t tap on your door and say, ‘how are you doing today?’ The Amish would say they have their God. From my perspective, they have each other. They have the support of their family and their friends, and they always have the community around them.” Ray concludes with a touch of sadness, perhaps even longing for the world he has left behind, “But what about people who don’t have that kind of community? Where do those people go? Where do they find refuge? Where is forgiveness rooted among those who don’t hold to a personal God?”
Each religion has its own insights and beliefs, many of which are radically different to the unqualified mercy extended by the Amish. “As I understand it, the Jewish response, for instance, isn’t so quick to forgive, and it isn’t so quick to spread love around.” Jeff Jacoby believes that Judaism teaches there are times when it is appropriate to hang on to anger, and that forgiveness has to be earned. “There’s no forgiveness unless it’s preceded by repentance. And repentance isn’t simply saying ‘if I offended anyone I am sorry,’ as politicians do so often when they are caught. It means you acknowledge that you did something wrong, you’re precise about what it was you did, you resolve never to do that wrongful deed again, you make restitution to the extent that you’re able to, and you direct your apology, again as best you’re able, to the one whom you wronged. And for that reason I think that murder, by definition, is unforgivable, whether it’s in Nickel Mines or in any other case where people’s first reaction is to say, ‘we forgive.’ You have no right to forgive. You weren’t the one who was murdered, and the one who was murdered is no longer here. So nobody has that right.”
For Jacoby this remains one of the core differences between Judaism and Christianity. It can be a tender spot for Jews who have experienced criticism by Christians, as if their insistence on the necessary steps for justice is lesser than the glory of freely given forgiveness. He muses that perhaps, “this is the great divide between the Jewish view of the world and the Christian view. The terrible event at Nickel Mines actually goes to the heart of the tension between them over these tough knotty issues of forgiveness and evil. Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe in forgiveness, but I question whether we can have a healthy or viable society that is based on this premise. Indeed, I found myself thinking how the Amish can only live this way because a few miles down the road there’s a police department that isn’t staffed by Amish people and they are not going to be so quick to forgive when somebody does something wrong. It is easier to survive like that when you are protected by a larger society that doesn’t live that way.”
There are also Amish members who have left the community and who remarked bitterly on the “unforgiving” treatment that they have received. Some have been shunned by their families and not seen them for years. They wondered why it was easier for the Amish to forgive a stranger who had murdered their children than to forgive their own children who had simply chosen to leave. Interestingly, there were reports that this apparent contradiction was not lost on the Amish. According to Janice Ballenger, “After the massacre some families did, in fact, reach out to their children, trying to repair the breach. It made them reevaluate the depth of the forgiveness they proclaim to have.”
It does appear, however, that the Amish understanding of unconditional forgiveness reflects their ability to forgive the per petrator without having to forgive the act. A s one Amish woman notes, “When I saw the bodies of the little girls at the viewing it just made me real mad, but mad at the evil, not at the shooter.” This attitude seems to immediately embrace the horror or revolt at what has been done, while also seeing the ignorance with which the perpetrator acted. In turn, this generates the capacity to forgive the ignorance.
“I knew that if there wasn’t an Amish person in the Roberts home to extend forgiveness that first day, there would be before the next day was out,” says Jonas Beiler. The Amish choose to handle such situations by immediately offering forgiveness. “Though it’s difficult to comprehend how they can forgive so quickly, it’s because it’s woven deep into their culture. They believe that Charles Roberts didn’t know what he was doing. Even if you bring overwhelming evidence to them showing how this man plotted and planned, it doesn’t matter. They don’t believe that the man knew what he was doing. And to some degree they’re right, for a good and sane man wouldn’t think or act in that way.”
The Amish forgiveness suggests that without it we can become locked in a place of bitterness, emotionally trapped in the story that we have been wronged. Their approach, whether agreed with or not, appears to lead them to a place of inner peace, as some of the parents claim it has. Or it may stifle the healing process prematurely, as some psychologists believe. “But,” as Professor McClay reminds us, “it is important to remember that the Amish understanding of forgiveness is at a far distance from the therapeutic approach dominating our era. It has nothing to do with feeling better in this life. It has nothing to do with asking for a better performance from the person being forgiven. If this occurs, they are wonderful benefits, grace notes. Rather, it’s entirely about making yourself ready for the next life and to present yourself before God in purity, to a degree that makes concerns about justice seem trivial by comparison.”
Late at night on October 12, almost two weeks after the shooting, the Amish community demolished the schoolhouse. By the time the sun rose, all traces of it had been removed. A new schoolhouse was built not far away, but this time closer to their homes.
“There was a group of three or four little Amish boys, maybe eight or nine years old, at the counseling session,” remembers Ballenger. “It was a few days
