Same but Different

I have recently been watching the television series called 'Living with the Amish' where six English teenagers spent a few weeks living with various families of the Amish tradition.  For the last week of their stay, they spent time with a family who had been 'shunned' by their 'church'.  When church leaders decide that you have disobeyed any of their strict rules then you are shunned and excluded from having conversations with other members (including your own family!) or mixing and participating in any church activities.

The six English teenagers

The great misdemeanor that these particular brothers had committed was to use a machine that, although did not use electricity (the use of which is forbidden), had a part in it that the leaders considered should be removed.  The brothers disagreed and so were now shunned.  They would be allowed back into the fold when they repented and admitted that they were wrong and had sinned.  When one of English teenagers questioned one brother about if he was going to repent, he said 'No' and the reason he gave was that he felt that what they had asked him to do by adapting the machine to the leaders' specifications was not biblical but was based on man-made rules.  The future meant therefore that eventually he and his family would be excommunicated.

I remember many years ago when I first went to live in South America, I was surprised how some things that I had always considered 'not right' seemed quite acceptable and this drove me back to the Bible.  As I searched for truth, I found (to my surprise) that many things that I had accepted as right or wrong was not really based on the Bible but partly on my upbringing in the particular church group to which I belonged and partly due to English customs and culture.  I began to learn that often people are neither better nor worse but simply different.  They see things differently and their point of view is as valid as mine.

The thing that impressed me most about the Amish group was that even though they had been shunned, they still wanted to live an Amish lifestyle.  They didn’t want to turn their backs on all things Amish and certainly didn’t want to embrace modern American living as a whole, although they found the telephone very useful!  They simply wanted to live Bible-based lives.  Today, many Christians of many other denominations are also doing the same.  Some feel quite isolated as they no longer ‘belong’ as before and certainly misunderstood or just not understood at all.  Asking questions and seeking the truth tends to lead to more searching of the Scriptures and not less. 

It is easy to criticize the Amish, saying they are narrow-minded and intolerant of any who do not conform, but I need to remember that narrow-mindedness and intolerance rear their ugly heads among people of many communities and religious persuasions.