THE STRENGTH OF FORGIVENESS

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong". ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Recently, I was fortunate to overhear a conversation among several acquaintances about the response of the Amish community in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania to the family of the deranged man, Charles Roberts IV, who stormed the Amish schoolhouse in that community in 2006 and killed five young Amish children before committing suicide. One acquaintance expressed admiration for the Amish community's immediate outpouring of support and forgiveness to the Roberts' family, but the remainder of the group voiced strong dissent to the Amish response to the shooting.

At first, I found the emotional intensity that accompanied the dissenters' remarks to be a surprising phenomenon, but after giving that discussion more thought over the past few weeks, I've come to believe that the emotional responses were a mask of sort to hide an underlying fear of weakness.

Gandhi was right. The Amish are strong, and not just in physical strength. The Amish are strong of heart! They are strong of character! They are strong in their belief in God and strong in their dedication to carrying out God's message of non-violence and forgiveness.

The lessons of the Amish are particularly apt given the Commonwealth of Virginia's recent execution of Theresa Lewis, a woman convicted of hiring killers to murder her husband and her stepson for insurance proceeds. Despite Ms. Lewis' religious conversion and her documented efforts to help fellow prisoners lead a more productive life, Virginia's governor rejected pleas for clemency and a commutation of Ms. Lewis' sentence from death to life in prison.

No doubt, Virginia's governor found little need to forgive, as such an attribute is frequently viewed in today's political world as a sign of weakness, but in refusing to grant a commutation of Ms. Lewis' death sentence, all the governor did was confirm his own weakness of character.