Amish Metal Detectors

We had a horrible tragedy recently. A selfish coward took ten Amish girls hostage, lined them up, and shot them execution-style before taking his own life. Similar situations have been repeated several times recently. It doesn’t take long for the various interest groups to propose solutions – more metal detectors, give guns to the teachers, increased vigilance by the students and staff.

Unfortunately, none of these approaches will solve the problem because the problem isn’t a man with a gun in a school. It’s something that goes much deeper than that. The problem with all of these cases is that the perpetrators can’t see anything past how the world affects only them. There is no consideration for anyone else. But why should we expect anything different? We had been bombarded for decades now about how the main goal of the world is make our own selves happy. “It’s all about me.” “If it feels good, do it.” “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Our whole society tells us that we need to look out for our own selfish interests. And then when a man with a gun does exactly that, we react with horror.

The microcosm of today’s story vividly makes the point. You have a man of “the world” troubled by something in his past. How does he resolve it? He kills innocent children (after apparently failing in his quest to first molest them). He leaves behind a wife and children to fend for themselves. He not only took away innocent lives, he ignored his own responsibilities in this world. But no matter, it was all about him.

Now look at the other side of the coin. A thirteen-year-old Amish girl pleaded to be shot first in the hope that she could save the others. The contrast of one selfish person who cares about no one but himself and a young girl who is willing to sacrifice her life to save others is stunning. We don’t have to look very far to see a huge difference. The Amish people have said a firm “no” to many of the evils of the world. I would bet that the Amish girls didn’t curse at home, had never watched Desperate Housewives, and had never looked at internet porn. I bet they respected their parents and grandparents and did their chores, and I’m sure that their religious grounding gave them a real sense of right and wrong. Many people will argue that the Amish people are backward with their horses and buggies and all. But in today’s world, being backward means that you have respect for other people, you can tell right from wrong, you know that there are real truths, and that there is a real Creator, which is something people don’t like to hear. So from that standpoint, I guess they are backward.
What does this mean for those of us who aren’t Amish? It means that we aren’t going to make schools safer by having more barricades. Our imposed barriers just seem to cause even worse behavior. If we really want to fix the problem, we need to fix ourselves. We need to get back to the time when there was more to life than our own little world. We need to get back to where right was right and wrong was wrong. We need to get back to where people did things for the greater good and recognized that there was a Greater Power out there. But the odds are against us. The “me” always seem to trump the “we.” Most societies don’t reinvent themselves. They just implode and get recreated as something totally different. If there is any hope, it has to start with each one of us. We all need to become a little less worldly and a little more Amish.