Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

by Timothy J. Keller

It is worth noting that the testimony of the Amish to Christ was so powerful that many observers felt the need to mute it. A made-for-TV film about the incident created a fictional character, Ida Graber, an Amish mother of one of the murdered children. In the movie, she is so filled with doubts and anger at God, and so unable to forgive the gunman, that she almost leaves her faith. Those who were actually involved with the Amish after the shootings countered that, despite the deep grief and pain, there was simply no one in the community who had their faith shaken or who could not forgive.287 The film showed—without aiming to—that the secular filmmakers who lived within the “immanent frame” couldn’t really comprehend an attitude toward God that enabled people to accept mysterious providence and dispense forgiveness without bitterness toward either God or the shooter. Four years after the incident, a group of sociologists published a book about it.288 One of their main conclusions was that our secular culture is not likely to produce people who can handle suffering the way the Amish did. Many pundits and commentators across the country tried to claim the Amish’s startling love as “the best in ‘us,’” ignoring the profoundly and distinctively Christian roots of what they did. The Amish Grace scholars called that out as naïve. They argued that the Amish ability to forgive was based on two things. First, it was grounded in deep reflection and meditation on Christ forgiving his t...