The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy

by Timothy J. Keller

In 2006 a lone gunman took hostage ten girls, ages six to thirteen, in an Amish schoolhouse. He shot eight of them, killing five, before committing suicide. The Amish startled the nation when as a community they forgave the killer of their children. They came to the shooter’s funeral, expressing support for his traumatized family that he left behind. Also, the individual Amish families that lost children forgave the gunman and his family. While many admired their actions, sociologists studying the event wrote that modern American society can no longer produce people capable of the same response. America, they argued, is now a culture of self-assertion in which all people are encouraged to express themselves and assert their rights. The Amish Christian community, by contrast, had created a culture of self-renunciation, patterned on Jesus’s self-sacrifice, renouncing rights in the service of others.11 Because it has lost the ideal of self-giving and sacrificial love, our society cannot provide its members with the resources for this basic requirement for human life in society.