Living with the Amish

Rhona recently stumbled across a programme on Channel 4 (Thursday evenings) called Living with the Amish. I watched one episode with her and we loved it so much that we went back and caught up on the whole series so far.

It’s a documentary about 6 British teenagers (late teens) who head off to the USA to live with different Amish communities for a few days or so.

                   

Usually these documentaries focus on the weirdness of these different cultures, and everything is done to make them seem like religious wackos. Whether it’s because the producer really likes the Amish, or because they just didn’t find them doing anything ridiculously wacko, the Amish come across as the most humble, genuine, hospitable people in the world.

The Amish allow people with a totally different value system into their lives, values that are often at conflict with their own, yet they never come across as judgemental. They are clear on their beliefs about what is right and wrong, but they don’t condemn the young people at all. They have such an impact on one girl, Charlotte, that she decides that she wants to know the God that they follow. They didn’t preach at her, they just lived their faith and she wants to know more.

Interestingly, one of the British teenagers is a Christian, and her experience among the Amish seems to lead her to question her own faith as some of her self-labelled ”liberal Christian views” are challenged by the lifestyles and beliefs of the Amish.

While I’m not convinced that the Gospel calls us to shut ourselves off from the World and all that it tempts us with, I am totally blown away by the joy that these people find in family, simplicity, purity, non-violence, community and song! They seem to embody something of Jesus that I crave to embody.

In the beautiful-yet-messed-up world that we live in, we could do with more people like the Amish.

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  1. calebellwood posted this