Amish grace
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
On Monday morning, October 2, 2006, a gunman entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. In front of twenty-five horrified pupils, thirty-two-year-old Charles Roberts ordered the boys and the teacher to leave. After tying the legs of the ten remaining girls, Roberts prepared to shoot them execution with an automatic rifle and four hundred rounds of ammunition that he brought for the task. The oldest hostage, a thirteen-year-old, begged Roberts to "shoot me first and let the little ones go." Refusing her offer, he opened fire on all of them, killing five and leaving the others critically wounded. He then shot himself as police stormed the building. His motivation? "I'm angry at God for taking my little daughter," he told the children before the massacre. The story captured the attention of broadcast and print media in the United States and around the world. By Tuesday morning some fifty television crews had clogged the small village of Nickel Mines,...
Reviews with the most likes.
In 2006, a gunman went into a one-room Amish schoolhouse and shot ten girls, killing five of them, and then killed himself. What is the immediate response of the Amish community? The Amish instantly voice their forgiveness of this man and his actions. They visit his widow and children and go to the killer's funeral. It almost feels superhuman.
The authors investigate this incident and the forgiveness that followed and look into the origins of Amish forgiveness in the Amish culture, how it is cultivated in young children, and how forgiveness works to heal.
