The Lord Is A Stronghold In The Day Of Trouble

  By Rich Carmichael

    A brother in Christ living in a very troubled country shared the following words in a recent letter to the Herald office: "We are living in harsh conditions, difficult unimagined situations, but we have our trust in God. We spend days without food, we have no source of any income but that can not change God, He is God and He will remain God." How good is this brother’s reminder that no matter how great our difficulties, we can always trust God. Nothing can change Him. He alone is God and He will always remain God.

    One of the many passages in the Bible that draws attention to the confidence we can have in the Lord, even in the most desperate of circumstances, is Psalm 46: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: He uttered His voice, the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah."

Our God Is Sovereign and Omnipotent

    In the Herald prayer room we have the words of Psalm 46:10 displayed prominently on the wall: "Be still, and know that I am God." How comforting and reassuring it is to those of us who look to the Lord to remember that He is sovereign over the world and the affairs of man. Though nations may rage, they are as "a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance" by the Lord (Isa. 40:15). When He utters His voice, the earth melts. He "reduces rulers to nothing…. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but He merely blows on them, and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble" (Isa. 40:23-24). The Lord asks the question, "To whom will you liken Me that I should be his equal?" (Isa. 40:25). The answer, of course, is that God has no equal. He alone is God over the universe, and God over our lives.

    How blessed is the truth for all of us who belong to Him that "The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge" (Psa. 46:7, 11). We can wait in confident expectation before Him; we can trust Him at all times and pour out our hearts before Him because He "is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…" (Psa. 46:1; 62:5-8). No matter how great the enemy against us may be, no matter how great our difficulties, our God is greater.

    Even if the earth beneath us gives way, we know that underneath us are His everlasting arms (Deut. 33:27). If the waters begin to rise around us, we know that He sits enthroned over the flood (Psa. 29:10) and He is able to draw us out of many waters (Psa. 18:16). If we become overwhelmed and call out to Him, He is able to lead us to the rock that is higher than we are (Psa. 61:2). If we face anxious times, we can lay our needs before Him, and He is able to grant us His peace which surpasses all understanding, peace which guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:7).

Our God Gives Us Strength

    If our strength begins to fail, we can rely upon the Lord to grant us new strength out of His unfailing strength: "…Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Even young men shall faint and be weary…But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (Isa. 40:28-31). His arm is not too short to rescue us, nor does He lack the strength to deliver us (Isa. 50:2). He is faithful to stand with us and strengthen us and protect us from the evil one (2 Tim. 4:17; 2 Thes. 3:3). His power is unlimited, and He is able to strengthen us with all power according to His glorious might so that we can have great endurance and patience (Col. 1:11). We can do everything through Him who strengthens us (Phil. 4:13).

    The Lord is not only omnipotent, and therefore able to help in all situations, but He is also omnipresent, and therefore always available to help. As David declares, "If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Thy hand will lead me, and Thy right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to Thee, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to Thee" (Psa. 139:8-12). Even if we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need fear no evil, for the Lord is with us, and His rod and staff comfort us (Psa. 23:4). He Himself has promised, "‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,’ so that we confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid…’" (Heb. 13:6).

    We are living in an hour when many individuals, nations and religions are in rebellion to our Lord Jesus Christ, and as the conflict between good and evil intensifies in these last days, we may well face greater trials and troubles. How important it is that we learn more of what it means to quiet ourselves before the Lord, to rest in Him, to listen for His voice, and to depend upon His shelter, His strength and His ever-present help. "The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him" (Nah. 1:7). 

(quoted from Herald of His Coming, October 23, 2010 edition) 

Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy

By David Weaver-Zercher 

Charles Carl Roberts IV (the "Gunman")

One year ago (2006), on October 2 , the words Nickel Mines became part of the nation’s vocabulary. It was near that Lancaster County village, just after ten in the morning, that Charles Carl Roberts IV carried his guns and his rage into a one-room Amish schoolhouse. Determined to even a score with God, Roberts quickly made good on his commitment. As police surrounded the building, he opened fire on ten young female hostages, killing five of them.

The juxtaposition of Roberts’s actions against the rural landscape on which they took place made the Nickel Mines school shooting a dreadfully captivating story. But even more newsworthy, if the op-ed pages were any measure, was the Amish community’s response: forgiveness, extended to the killer’s family within hours.

In the year since those events took place, I’ve had opportunities to talk with many people about the school shooting and Amish forgiveness. Along with questions about how the Amish could forgive their daughters’ killer so quickly, one issue has emerged time and again: how could the Amish be so gracious to a person like Charles Roberts, and yet remain so judgmental of their own kin who leave the Amish church? 

This question, of course, refers to the practice of shunning. In Amish society, when a person joins the Amish church (most members join in their late teens or early twenties), the new member commits to a lifetime of faithfulness. This vow includes the commitment to honor the church’s rules and regulations (the Ordnung). Those who violate the Ordnung are confronted by church leaders and instructed to repent. If they refuse, they are eventually excommunicated (excluded from fellowship) and shunned.

Like many things in Amish life, shunning has captured the imagination of those who observe the Amish from afar—and that imagination is sometimes wrong. Unlike the picture painted in some Hollywood movies, Amish excommunication and shunning rarely happen precipitously or at the whim of authoritarian leaders. Rather, the final decision to excommunicate a church member comes after a long process of confrontation and conversation. In the end, the entire church community (a local congregation of about 75 members) votes to endorse the expulsion proposed by the church’s leaders.

Shunning does not involve severing all social ties. Members may talk with ex-members, for example. But certain forms of social interaction are forbidden, such as accepting rides or money from ex-members, and eating at the same table with them. Members are expected to shun ex-members even within their own household, and those who refuse to do so may jeopardize their own standing within the church. Although shunning is a widely accepted practice within Amish faith, the strictness with which it is applied varies from family to family and church district to church district.

Whatever its severity, however, shunning does appear to contradict the notion so prominent after the Nickel Mines school shooting—that the Amish are a gracious, forgiving people. Some commentators picked up on this inconsistency in the weeks following the shooting, including one whose article was headlined, “Forgiveness—But Not for All.” This writer described a woman’s decision to leave her Amish community to marry an outsider, only to be ostracized by her family and friends. “A terrible killer might be forgiven,” the writer observed, but “a woman in love with an English man could not be.”

How can the Amish, so forgiving in one context, be so judgmental in another? The answer lies in the distinction between forgiveness and pardon. Forgiveness refers to a victim’s commitment to forgo revenge and to replace anger (toward the offender) with love and compassion. Pardon, on the other hand, refers to the dismissal of disciplinary consequences that ensue from the offense. 

This distinction between forgiveness and pardon is not unique to the Amish; in fact, it appears as a matter of course in the psychological literature on forgiveness—a literature that’s been pioneered by Robert Enright at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Forgiveness is an act of mercy toward an offender, writes Enright, but granting forgiveness (as defined above) does not necessarily mean that justice will be bypassed. Pardoning an offense may—or may not—accompany the act of forgiveness.

There are many practical applications of this distinction. For instance, a counselor may encourage a client to forgive her abuser, but nonetheless support the victim’s desire to see her abuser restrained. Similarly, a family could forgive someone who murdered their child, and yet continue to believe that the murderer should be imprisoned for life. In these situations, victims could forgive the offender, replacing feelings of anger with compassion, but oppose the lifting of disciplinary sanctions. (This, of course, would have been the case with the Amish community had Charles Roberts not committed suicide after his rampage: they would have sought to forgive him but nonetheless supported his imprisonment).

Within the confines of the Amish church, discipline is not literal imprisonment. Still, the Amish make the distinction between forgiving a wrongdoer in their midst and pardoning that wrongdoer. In their view, a person who takes a vow of church membership, then reneges on that vow, has harmed the community. They may be able to forgive the wrongdoer for his/her rebellious act (their success at forgiveness is mixed, of course), but they will not grant pardon (i.e., release the wrongdoer from discipline) until he/she repents. If the offender doesn’t repent and submit to the church’s Ordnung, discipline in the form of shunning commences and continues until repentance takes place.

For better or worse, the Amish view this practice as a form of love—tough love, to be sure. The Amish believe they have a divine responsibility to judge those who break their baptismal vows, to remind them of what the Amish believe to be the eternal consequences of their negligence. This belief is formed both by their reading of the Bible and from their most valued confession of faith. According to the 1632 Dordrecht Confession of Faith, shunning exists for the spiritual good of the person being shunned, producing both pain and shame with the goal of repentance and restoration to the community.

This, of course, is not a common notion of love in twenty-first-century America, at least as it pertains to the church. From the outside, Amish-style discipline appears harsh, even cruel—the exact opposite of what their response to Charles Roberts seemed to be. Those who have experienced shunning by Amish churches often agree that the Amish are cruel in their treatment of former members.

The Amish response to this charge will never satisfy their critics, but at least their answer is clear. It is also quite logical, at least from a perspective that considers life to be short, eternity to be long, and heaven and hell to be real. For a people who believe choices have eternal consequences, to fail to discipline would not only neglect their God-given responsibility, it would in fact be the unloving thing to do. It may not be as picturesque as a horse-drawn buggy, but this uniquely Amish view of spiritual care is one more example of how the Amish walk out of step with the culture around them.

Mr. Weaver-Zercher is associate professor of American religious history at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., and author of the recently-released Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (Jossey-Bass, 2007).