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Ask The Amish is a section of the Remnant’s Walk with reprint articles and letters from the Amish community from a publication called “Family Life”, which started back in 1967. Some original authors are listed in the publication, some are not. If there is an author listed, they would be listed at the end of the article with an original publishing date. Some Amish chose not to put their names on articles they write.

Going about doing Good

We are to be witnesses or good examples to others, right in our own homes, communities and congregations. That is the place to start. If we are not Christians there, we will not be Christians anywhere else.

Being a witness “unto the uttermost part of the earth” could well mean to the evil and materialistic world around us. There are many around us who see godless pleasure, wealth and comfort as the only goals in this life. Some of those see only our failings, and are hostile to us. But then, there are also others who look upon our ideals and have a secret longing for something better than only the empty values that the people of the world are craving for.

There was once a tourist, who after seeing the Plain People, remarked “I feel that this is the way life should be lived, but I know few of us on the outside could stay content to live that way long, because we are now so used to our affluent way of life.”

We are to be a witness to the world, but at the same time, we are to be separate from it, (2nd Cor 6:17). How could we better be “the salt of the earth” and “a light to the world”, than by contentedly living a plain life, and by giving up the idols that the world holds so dear? (“The Scriptures Have the Answer” 12-84)

The Gods of This World

Where are our Christian churches today? A look at the main body of the Mennonite Church reveals that as late as the early 1900’s, the women wore plain stockings, a modest length dress of plain material, complete with a cape and an apron, and an appropriate prayer covering tied at the chin. The men wore suspenders, and a straight-collar coat.

As the years passed, changes came one by one. The dresses became shorter, flesh-colored stockings appeared; the cape and apron gave way to the skirt and blouse, then finally the miniskirt. The prayer covering lost the strings and became smaller and smaller, until today it has been completely lost or remains a remnant of what it once was. The wearing of the straight-collar coat gave way among men to the lay-down collar and neck-tie.

The coming of radio, and later Television, introduced youth heroes like Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Many of the Mennonite youth carried pictures of theses singing stars in their billfolds, and therefore idolized them. Within the past twenty years, women in the main body of the Mennonite Church, who traditionally wore long and uncut hair, began wearing cut hair. Many Mennonites deplored these changes, yet nevertheless they came. The question is, why did these changes come? The answer seems to point to a trend within the church to look and live like the rest of the world.

It is not our purpose to degrade the Mennonite Church. We have used this example only to show what can and what did happen in a short span of fifty or sixty years. The question is, do the plainer Mennonite groups, including the Amish, have anything to boast of? The answer is no. The very same spirit which ate into the core and majority of the Mennonite Church is much alive and working away within the Amish churches today. Perhaps the changes come much more slowly or over a long period of time; yet the same spirit is there, slowly working away. If you talk to older people, from an older settlement, they will likely admit that their settlement has changed from what it was fifty years ago. The dresses may be shorter, prayer coverings on the women smaller to please the eye. The houses are finer and have more decorations. The church has adopted more of a trend toward modernization, and so forth. When undesired practices enter and become rooted into the congregation, it becomes almost impossible to root them out or to bring back what it has lost. Perhaps you ask, “What can I do to better the conditions in my congregation?” The place to start is in your own heart (D.B.,6-79).

A Spoiled Generation

Several years ago, I noticed a small cartoon in a newspaper that caught my attention. It showed a picture of a living room in a typical modern home. A brightly lighted and gaily decorated Christmas tree was in one corner. A ten-year old boy stood in the middle of a wide assortment of toys he had just unwrapped. There was an electric train piled to one side of him, a brand-new bike leaning against the wall, a catcher’s mitt at his feet, and in his hands, he held a model airplane. The room all around him was strewn with expensive toys and gifts and wrapping paper.

It was a simple cartoon, but it told the complete story. He held the last gift in his hand and was looking around for more, with a frown on his face. Under the cartoon was the caption, “You mean this is all I get?” What a spoiled child! His parents had spent a couple of hundred dollars on several dozen toys, games, playthings and gadgets. Instead of being awed and grateful, he complained because he did not get more. Instead of complaining, his eyes should have been shining and his lips saying, “You mean I get all this?”

However, it is hard to believe that a child could be so spoiled, the truth is that all of us have more in common with this child than we like to think. In a way all of us have become spoiled children, unbelievably blessed by material things, yet standing in the midst of plenty and waste, and asking, “You mean this is all I get?”

We have life rather easy compared with our forbearers. They were hunted, persecuted, tortured, and killed. The government passed special laws against them. We have religious freedom, and the government passes special laws in our favor [ we don’t expect to suffer] torture or pain [ alas punishment for faith].

Our immigrant forefathers toiled with their axes and hoes, to wrest a living from thick forest and tree- stump covered clearings. We have rich dark soil, loose, fertile, and productive, and teams of horses to work it with. They had to make almost everything, from their axe handles to their homespun clothing. We go into town and buy what we want. No weary hours working into the night, carving, weaving, and spinning.

Our forbearers had a diet with little variety—corn mush, potatoes, meat. Our tables are loaded with delicacies they never even heard of—bananas, oranges, and pineapples. They wore clothing that was rough, stiff, and uncomfortable. We have super fabrics with nylon added to last longer, or Dacron to keep out the wrinkles.

We have it easy. We have grown fat, soft, lazy, and spoiled. We have forgotten how to suffer, and we even refuse to be inconvenienced. Everything has to be handy. Our ancestors had to walk several hundred miles to visit relatives. They would ride horseback over rough and dangerous trails, taking several weeks or months to make the trip.

Today Greyhound Buses speeding over superhighways, aren’t fast enough for us. We want a taxi to pick us up at our doorstep and chauffeur us wherever we want to go. It’s too much bother to change buses, carry suitcases, and wait in depots. Will our children in turn find it too much bother to hire a taxi, and decide to buy a car themselves, so they can go when and where they like?

It does seem to work that way. The luxuries of one generation become the necessities of the next. Let’s just look in one area of life, the water supply. When our forbearers came into this country, they carried their water from a spring. There were many trips for water, morning, evening, and even throughout the day. It was tiresome, time consuming labor, but it was accepted without question, because it had to be done.

Gradually, as homes became more permanent, wells became common. What a luxury this must have seemed! A well within a hundred feet of the house! No more long trips down the hot, dusty, windy path for water; now it was close, convenient and handy. All they had to do was lower the bucket into the well, then hand over hand pull it up with fresh, sparkling, clean fresh water.

After a generation or two, pumps came in the scene. Ah, once again how handy it seemed. No more straining backs and tired aching arms, pulling up that rope to bring in a bucket of water. Just grab the pump handle and up comes the water. It was much quicker and easier.

Nevertheless, what one generation thought was so easy the next found tiring, they felt that pumping water by hand was a hardship, and took so long. So up went the windmill. Ah, the whole family was amazed at the convenience of it all. No more standing and puffing, and pumping. All they had to do was walk to the well and dip the water from a large wooden tank. It seemed so much easier, that this generation never imagined that the next might balk at the trip to the well. But that is exactly what happened.

What? Walk to the well and carry all that water! I guess not. So, in goes a system of water pipes. Ah, what a grand luxury. Water pumped right into the house, water waiting and ready 24 hours of the day at a turn of the spigot. Turn it open and there’s water to wash the face, water to cook a meal, and water to fill the tea-kettle.

Fill the tea-kettle, did you say? What for? To heat water to wash the dishes? Ha, guess again. That’s not for us. We’re the next generation. Who has time to heat water when we want it? Why, with the water heater installed, all we need to do is turn the tap and there is all the hot water we like.

That brings us to the present. What will the next generation want? We immediately think, “But hot water in the tap, that’s so handy to wash dishes with, we can’t imagine that our children won’t be satisfied with that.”

No, of course not. Our parents couldn’t imagine that we wouldn’t be satisfied with their luxuries, either. What we appreciate our children take for granted.

Satan likes to make us believe, that if only we had this or that, we could be so much happier. If only the church would allow this we’d be satisfied. We wouldn’t ask for more. We’d be content.

Would it really work that way? Let’s look around with our eyes open. If having an abundance of material things would bring contentment, then those who have the most should be the most contented. Who has more material things than the people of this world? Anything they like they can go and buy. New cars. Fancy clothes. Vacations to faraway places. Anything. You name it, and the world has it. And if they don’t, they invent it.

Then are they contented? Are they satisfied with what they have? The answer is obvious. One look at the headlines of a newspaper should convince anyone. Riots. Strikes. Demands. Boycotts. Protests. Marches. Welfare. Unrest. Crime. Divorces. Suicides. Rebellions. Violence. Tensions.

There was never a generation that had so much and appreciated it so little. Young people grow up, and never raise a finger to work. Still they are dissatisfied and run away by the thousands. No, the people of this world are not content with all the luxuries they have. Yahshua said long ago, “A man’s life does not consist of the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12:15).

The time has come for each one of us to stop and ask some questions. Where are we as Plain People? Where have we come from? Where are we going? What factors have brought us to where we are today? In what ways have we suffered too much from Materialism? To what degree do we have the same spirit as the world has the spirit of always wanting more?

What are the solutions? Perhaps the first step is to become aware of how good we really have it, and to realize what spoiled children we have become.

Another thing that would help would be to renew our convictions on the teachings of the Bible showing the importance of simple living. We need to rediscover that a simple way of life, separated from the world, is indeed Yahweh’s pattern for His people.

However scriptural simple living is, it is not an automatic passport to the Kingdom. Thousands of people live simple lives with just a tin roof over their heads and a dirt floor beneath their feet, and so few earthly possessions that they can load them all on an oxcart. They still lead ungodly lives, wallowing in sin and poverty. Hand in hand with our simple living must be a devout faith in Yahweh, honesty of conviction, and an earnest desire for brotherhood. Olden times were simpler, but that does not mean that everything that is old is good. Our goal is not to pattern after the early Americans, but after the early Christians (believers).

Will the same trends and influences that have wrecked families’ communities in the world, also destroy us in time? If we follow the same route, travel in the same train, we cannot expect to arrive at a different destination. Trailing fifty years behind the world isn’t going to get us where we want to be. Those who ride in the caboose are going to be in the same place as the engineer. There is constant pressure in the surrounding society to conform in such areas as travel and work. Yet, there is plenty of evidence, if we care to see it, that such things as tractor farming and automobile travel, are deadly in the long run, eroding the values of brotherhood, simple living, family sharing, and meaningful community relationship.

If we allow ourselves to become like spoiled children, always wanting more and more, we cannot expect long to resist the temptation these and other modern inventions present to us, and our children. If our love of ease becomes greater than our willingness to deny ourselves and to sacrifice, we are well down the road of no return, the one way street of modernism and materialism.

We don’t need more conveniences as much as we need more convictions. In this world of emphasis and luxury and earthly possessions, it may be difficult to be content with little. But it is impossible to be content with much (“Views and Values”, E. Stoll, 7-73).