Could we possibly forgive their murderer, Charles Carl Roberts IV? Could we attend his funeral and declare that all funds raised to defray the cost of his horrible crime be shared with his widow and children? Could we find love in our heart for a man responsible for so much tragedy and sorrow in our lives.

Could we live by our faith the way the Amish community has?

“Their response has taught us to take a good, solid look at our own understanding of our faith as believers,” says the Rev. David Woolverton, of St. Marks United Methodist Church in Mount Joy. “Here is a great mirror on what it means to live out what you believe. Do we live it out when the going gets rough?”

Woolverton is one of several ministers, rabbis and psychologists contacted to talk about the response of the Amish community to the school shootings that killed five young girls and left another five in critical condition on Oct. 2.

As of this morning, there was no change in the condition of the five surviving girls.

All those interviewed agree that forgiveness is the foundation for healing.

“Forgiveness is the core of any Christian denomination and of other faiths as well,” says the Rev. Erica Woods, associate pastor at St. James Episcopal Church in Lancaster. “I think, when you have anger, it’s a wonderful thing to have faith, faith that has parameters, that has a liturgy to help you pass through it.”

“I think the greater the reality of your faith, the easier it is to forgive,” says the Rev. Jim Whiteman of the Lancaster County Bible Church. “People here have been talking about the Amish response, that their faith isn’t just words. And I think we all want to identify with that. Nobody knows how they would respond.”

“Typically, today, when something happens, you hear the response: I’m outraged,” says the Rev. Johnny Miller, senior pastor at Calvary Church on Landis Valley Road. “You have to make a choice between anger and grief. If you choose to go the route of grief, forgiveness comes. Anger causes revenge.”

And as Rabbi Jack Paskoff of Temple Shaarai Shomayim in Lancaster notes, revenge can sometimes feel better.

“I think hatred is sometimes an easier emotion. We resort to it far too quickly. Sympathy is hard, forgiveness is hard,” he says. “I thought what the Amish did was beautiful.”

Ironically, the shooting happened on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement for Jews, the holiest day of the year. They are called to ask forgiveness, both from God and from the people they have wronged.

“People walk around with anger, they hold grudges,” Paskoff says. “And that serves no purpose. Learning to forgive adds peace to the world.”

Ultimately, from a psychological point of view, the act of forgiveness is quite healthy.

“By not forgiving, you give the person who hurt you the power to turn you into a bitter, resentful person,” says Claudia Haferkamp, the assistant chair of the psychology department and graduate program coordinator in psychology at Millersville University.

“If you don’t forgive, then what basically happens is that the person who hurt you is fine, or in the case of Charles Roberts, dead, but you are using energy, time and emotion reliving it,” says Rita Wade El, a professor of psychology at Millersville University. “You continue to be a victim.”

The idea that you’ll feel better once the perpetrator is brought to justice is just not true, according to Wade El.

“People often think if they get revenge, they will feel better,” she says. “But when Timothy McVeigh (responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 and injured 800) was executed, the victims’ families said they thought that would make them feel better, but it didn’t.”

The loss was still there.

“We are wired by God to have a sense of justice,” says Whiteman. “So when we see something like Amish children suffering, there is a sense of anger over the raw injustice of it. I don’t think it’s wrong to feel that sense of injustice, but at the same time, you have to accept that the perpetrator is someone God loves. That’s a complicated aspect of faith.”

“So many problems people bring to (therapy) relate to wounds and hurts and grievances,” says Haferkamp. “So much resentment and hurt builds up it weighs a person down and it can bleed out in inappropriate ways.”

Indeed, in a suicide note, Roberts said he was filled with hate toward himself and God. His rage, wherever it came from, had horrific consequences for his victims and their families, his wife and children and himself.

“A young man at my church said to me that we need to look hard at not blaming Mr. Roberts,” says Woolverton. “A lot of who he was, his brokenness, that’s in all of us. We are all broken people. God asks us what we are going to do with that brokenness.”

Paskoff says that the thing that made the Amish response so beautiful was that it helped Roberts’ family begin healing as well.

“His family is in need of peace, too,” Paskoff says. “By forgiving, the Amish managed to find peace for themselves and give peace to a family that knew nothing about what was going on.”

Haferkamp notes that trying to come to a sense of understanding with the person who hurt you is often pointless.

“You may want to hear somebody say they are sorry, but that gesture isn’t what forgiveness is about. If the other person expresses regret or doesn’t express it, you have no control over that,” she says. “Forgiveness is something you do for yourself.”

While faith can play a huge role in bringing forgiveness forward, Haferkamp says there are aspects of our Judeo Christian culture that can make forgiveness more difficult.

“The idea that the wages of sin, that if you do something wrong, you have to pay for it, can be problematic. It doesn’t help you release the pain.”

Miller says for Christians, scriptures do describe God being angry with sin and injustice.

“But that anger was satisfied with the cross,” he says. “We realize we have been forgiven, and we must forgive others as God has forgiven us.”

But Haferkamp cautions that forgiveness is not a magic cure to our sorrow and pain.

“The phrase forgive and forget, that’s not accurate,” she says. “Efforts to suppress or deny pain don’t help.

“Forgiveness isn’t easy,” Wade El says. “But it’s essential to our recovery.”

Adds Woolverton, “Jesus commands us to forgive and not just the people we decide deserve it.”

Perhaps Mennonite author Peter Dyck sums it up the best when he writes: “Forgiving is a serious business because it is basically for our own spiritual, emotional and physical benefit. We may or may not establish a new relationship with the person who injured us; that is not the heart of forgiveness. When we forgive, we finally stop hurting ourselves, hand the whole matter over to God, and believe what he says: Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.”

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