A Gentle Answer: Our 'Secret Weapon' in an Age of Us Against Them

by Scott Sauls

In the fall of 2006, a Pennsylvania milk truck driver named Charles Carl Roberts IV burst into a one-room Amish schoolhouse and opened fire on a classroom of girls, killing five and severely injuring five more. After this, he turned the gun on himself and took his own life. In his suicide note, Mr. Roberts confessed that he had been secretly tormented for many years by two dark spots from his own past. The first was the memory of how he had molested two of his younger relatives twenty years before. The second was the memory of losing his own daughter, who had died nine years previously. The loss of his child led Mr. Roberts to also confess in his note that he hated God. There were two groups of people in attendance at his funeral. The first was the expected group: his family and friends of his family, who sat somber and shocked over what had happened. The second was a group of about thirty men, women, and children from the Amish community whose daughters Roberts had murdered and injured. Commenting on the series of events, nearby sociologist and college professor Donald Kraybull remarked that “the most powerful demonstration of the depth of Amish forgiveness was when members of the Amish community went to the killer’s burial service . . . Several families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer’s family.” It was also reported that this Amish community had don...