Introspection

© Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, October 8, 2006

I don’t know of anything that has “tripped my trigger” as much as the murder of the five Amish girls and the severely wounding of five others at the Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

On two different occasions, I and Miss Debbie have spent time in Lancaster County.  It is a beautiful area with quaintly named towns and communities, teeming barns, and well-fed, productive  dairy cattle.  It is not the sort of place one would expect to encounter evil.

I am angry…but at who?

The murderer, Charles Carl Roberts, IV, appears to have been mentally unhinged.  He fantasized that he had sexually molested two female relatives some 20 years ago, when he was 12 and they were but toddlers.  The two female relatives say it didn’t happen.  He asserted in his final telephone call with his wife that, for the past two years, he had dreams of doing it again to other young girls.

If there is any kind of “silver lining” to this story it is that the arrival of police at the rural one room school may have prevented Roberts from sexually abusing the girls before killing them.  From all accounts, he had brought the necessary utensils to engage in such behavior.

Roberts and his wife lost their first baby, Ellice, some nine years ago.  She lived only 20 minutes after birth.  Although they, subsequently, had three other children, Roberts never seems to have gotten over the death of his eldest daughter.  His suicide note to his wife and his conversation with her via cell phone just before he died indicated that he hated himself and God.

I feel frustration…frustration at the fact that evil like Roberts’s cannot be anticipated or protected against.   I am frustrated that the Roberts children will grow up without a father and with the stigma of a murderer for a parent.  The consequences of Robert’s crime may not be fully realized for decades to come.  I am frustrated that Robert’s wife was at a prayer group when this terrible tragedy occurred.  What was that all about?

I hate…when I think of Roberts?

Then, I think of the Amish people.

They do not hate.  They are fatalists.  They believe this was ordained to happen.  They know that the five children so brutally taken from them in that dreadful hour on Monday morning are in Heaven.  They believe, as sure as there is a God, He is just and faithful, and He has embraced those precious children in His loving arms.

My hatred melts away.

If the Amish families, from whom Charles Carl Rogers, IV, robbed of their most precious possessions, can forgive him, then I can forgive him.    As the Amish tell us, it is not for me to judge him.  His transgressions are numbered with the irrevocable past.  His judgment is determined.   His destiny is decided.  He is in the hands of a merciful, yet just, God.  I pity him.

There is evil in the world.  It is growing and becoming stronger.  Yet, justice and truth shall prevail in the end…and that end, I suspect, may not be too long in coming.