To Thine Own Heart Be True: Is There True Freedom for Amish?

By P. Cal Westmore

There is an awakening. There is a stirring. Within the Amish culture, proud of their forefathers' traditions, there is a desire within many for deeper spiritual things. Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled." Somehow, following the path that the majority walk inside their church doesn't provide that spiritual satisfaction for many. It's time to pursue where God is leading the individual.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638742319

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To Thine Own Heart Be True

Is There True Freedom for Amish?

P. Cal Westmore

Copyright © 2021 by P. Cal Westmore

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

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These writings aren’t for everyone but are specifically for people having grown up in the Amish church culture but are now hungry to move forward, sick of not growing like they should, and are willing to embrace change, even if that means laying down tradition. If, however, you are fully committed to your traditional ways or church long term, come hell or high water, I’d probably have more luck pushing a stubborn mule than convincing you of something you want nothing to do with, which I have no interest in doing anyway. Convincing you, that is! If the only way I can get you to read this book is by begging you, this information isn’t for you. It’s only for people hungry for more truth. Feel free to lay these writings down at this point and continue doing whatever you’re committed to. Because of the nature of stories outlined here and the privacy of those who shared their stories, names and places have been changed for the protection of the majority involved.

Thank you.

1

Here’s How We’ve Always Done It!

Law is erected thoroughly to my preference and to your bondage; I shall be faithful to it as long as I prefer, and you’ll be faithful to it as long as I prefer.

History is again repeated in showing that the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it because it is maintained through unquestioned traditions and not rational thinking. However, when a customary method of doing things can finally be broken through with common sense and the freedom to reason, one is more likely to break tradition.

What we know about ourselves in the upcoming future lends credence primarily to resting upon the holy grail of our dead forefathers for guidance in justifying following the beaten path of the traditional system lived for generations. This path and custom are erected thoroughly to the gain and preference of past leadership; all descendants being faithful to ordinances as long as their leadership prefers.

When specific ways, habits, beliefs, and conveniences of ages past were necessary and set by our forefathers to comply with accommodations, necessities, and inventions of that time, we think it not uncommon that they were allowed to think for themselves in setting traditions but consider it a great sin generations later to even consider breaking those traditions to comply with modern-day inventions that the nineteenth-century population could not have imagined.

A standard stumbling block in the present day is the belief that one’s traditional family culture is as it’s always been in generations past, as if nothing was ever different than what we know it to be now, and that it would be unforgivable sin to do anything different than what we or our ancestors have supposedly always known.

If we had the freedom and common sense to think like we should for ourselves, we might recognize that not that many generations back, much or all of our present culture, implanted in our thinking as having never changed, did not even exist. It’s having the freedom to look far enough back into our ancestors’ history to realize that there is non-Amish blood running through our veins.

As much as Amish pride themselves in staying the same throughout the generations, advances in today’s economy make it very difficult to remain unscathed. Changing times have pushed them to adapt to some extent, so they don’t get left behind socially, economically, and commercially, with the more liberal Amish communities being the first to bend the rules, while areas more deeply set in the old style hang on to what they grew up with. As much as they value the past, advances in today’s society make it practically impossible to stay unchanged.

The last several decades have pushed them to adapt more to modern times, with advances in the twenty-first-century economy having shown many that they’ll get left behind if they aren’t willing to change to some extent.

A major change needing to be embraced is attaining the freedom to make one’s own moral and spiritual decisions. While teaching the multitudes, Jesus said to them, Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? (Luke 12:57).

In judging for myself what is right, does that mean that I should listen to no one else? Absolutely not! But who to listen to needs to be chosen carefully and wisely. The book of Proverbs talks numerous times about mentorship, with the wiser person advising the less knowledgeable.

So what’s the difference between learning through mentorship and following tradition?

Thinking!

Mentorship is obtaining advice from someone with the wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and fruit that the less knowledgeable lacks while being trained and encouraged to develop the lifetime skill of thinking and making one’s own choices.

Tradition says, Here are the rules! Here’s how we’ve always done it! Don’t think about it! Don’t question it! If reading the Bible gives you second thoughts, don’t read it! Just listen to long sermons, traditional ordinances, and scriptures being said on Sunday in a monotonous voice that puts you to sleep in a language you barely understand, assuming that the preacher has it all figured out because his name was drawn for that position by God’s will, so we can assume he just knows better than us what the truth is. If you do give it another thought, we may have to sit down with you and straighten you out. God forgive you for the terrible sin of thinking for yourself instead of depending on us to make any significant decisions for you.

The freedom to think and choose for oneself versus going by laws are like the two ends of a seesaw. The basic rule of the seesaw is—when one seat goes down, the other goes up. They can’t both be up at the same time. This outline is true for abiding by man-made religious laws, which is on one end of the seesaw, versus the freedom to think and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit on the opposite end of the seesaw. The higher one end is, the lower the other is. If you are deeply immersed in religious laws that decide for you what to do and not to do, which is up, then the other end of the seesaw, following God’s leading and thinking freely, is down. You can’t have a lot of both.

However, the more freedom and ability you have to choose and decide for yourself, the less laws you have hovering over you, the thinking end rising up, and the rules being lowered. But if one starts reasoning and thinking while under strict ordinances—we’ve got a problem! A high amount of strict laws at one end, along with a high level of deep thinking and questioning on the other end, cannot exist for long. When a person within a system saturated with laws and ordinances starts thinking and questioning what is truly right, the laws and thinking will clash, and something will have to separate or change.

On the seesaw’s end of man-made laws, everyone’s expected to be the same to the extent possible, everyone obeying the same ordinances of what they can or cannot do, but on the other end, God leads each person separately and individually. Where He leads one person isn’t necessarily where He leads the next person, and the laws that God puts on one’s heart isn’t always the same laws for others. Everyone has a unique calling by God in their life. The higher the seesaw’s level of ordinances are, depicting what’s right and wrong for everyone, the more difficult it is to recognize and to follow God’s specific leading for each person.

Prison is for people who don’t know how to handle themselves, choosing and laying down restrictions about what they do and don’t do according to good order and commonsense by one’s judgment. Therefore, they need to be put under manual restrictions by authorities who tell them directly what they can or can’t do, because either they don’t know how to do it themselves, or else just chose not to do so. The law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers (1 Tim. 1:9). In light of this, church leaders, laying down ordinances and laws for the whole church, build around them a prison of bondage from their youth, actually creating a ball-and-chain scenario that makes people do what the leaders want as if they lack the means or ability to choose what is the best decision for themselves. They are taught that the best thing they can do is to just succumb to ordinances and outlines, with the ability to think to reason having drowned in the sea of tradition.

The thing to understand about laws as opposed to thinking freely is that there is a time for each of those scenarios. The younger or less mature one is, the more necessary it is to be under laws and directed by people who know what is right or wrong. This is true at school, at home, or in our spiritual walk.

When a baby boy is born, he is 100 percent under the laws of adults. The parents don’t say, He needs to figure out how to think and decide for himself. Leave him alone till he’s got it figured out. While growing up, he needs a lot of guidance available to steer him in the right direction for years, eventually waning beyond that dependence on others to make his choices as he thinks for himself. That doesn’t necessarily overrule the need to ask for guidance from others having information and knowledge he needs in a given field. Yet in the process, he has the freedom to choose who to ask on what subject.

Although the older one becomes, and the greater in wisdom one ideally grows, old age and wisdom don’t always go hand in hand. People can grow older while staying immature at the same time, or grow in greater wisdom and knowledge far ahead of their age group. Jesus demonstrated that in the temple at age twelve, astounding the teachers and his parents. Hiding God’s Word in their hearts from their childhood has often taken many youth ahead of others their age.

The problem comes when people are so immersed in laws that make decisions for them, that it is ingrained into their heads that they need to be under those laws all their life. The very rules that helped them grow eventually kept them from growing further, and in due time, those outlines, if not let go of, become a prison for the individual.

The long-term goal is to learn and master the ability to choose, not automatically doing what laws say or others do because that’s just the thing to do. Get into the habit of questioning the methods practiced by many, who just followed what others did, who followed what others did, who followed…

Anyway, moving on!

A large percentage of people following that system relies on wrong thinking. It’s come to be believed that obedience is just a matter of shutting off our brains and taking orders, especially the stricter the existing ordinances are.

A significant thing with which to consider the level of freedom or bondage of a church or religion is how many laws exist and how strict they are. Laws are there to guide us in the right direction, to tell us the right thing to do. Laws are necessary for a crucial time in our lives and are there to teach us to think and choose the right things. The goal, eventually, is to think beyond those laws.

The thing to understand is that between thinking and needing laws is that you can’t have a lot of both. As mentioned, it’s the law of the seesaw; You’ll have a lot of laws telling you what to do, or else you’ll have learned to Test all things (1 Thess. 5:21) and developed the skill of choosing and thinking for yourself.

Assuming for a moment that an Amish minister’s name is truly chosen by God’s divine leading, does that mean the rest of the church is to ignore the leading and inspiration of God’s Spirit, being devoted to follow age-old traditions taught on Sunday? Many Amish have a tough time recognizing and following God’s leading. What they’ve learned is to succumb to the voice of the church leaders as a puppet to the puppeteer. Is a chosen person faultless as an authority to the church?

Consider what the Lord said concerning Bezalel, a chosen one of His… And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship… (Exod. 31:3). The physical and spiritual gifts of this chosen man are both mentioned in the same sentence. Obviously, his workmanship skills are developed over time, with thousands of mistakes in the process of being mastered. Wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are developed with no fewer mistakes. Just because someone has an anointing or calling doesn’t mean he has perfect understanding and won’t make mistakes in his sermons. Even a chosen preacher’s teachings should never override God’s Spirit within us, whose leading may not always comply with the sermon.

There are times, however, for a Sunday sermon to go hand in hand with the leading of God’s Spirit in us, being exactly what we need to hear right then.

A level of slavery exists within the Amish church today, with the church system created and maintained by the leadership’s preferences. The leadership of this church has mostly kept together this kingdom by convincing them they are their only true salvation, maintaining the specific restrictions that church leaders are to command, and the remainder are to obey.

In doing so, they have become as God to their church so that they look up to them, honoring and obeying anything that they decide is the thing to do rather than God’s Word being their guide. When they, as God, establish ordinances, they’re not primarily displaying the best decisions—but initially their power and authority, which their church fears. They’ve been taught from their youth to uphold the church leadership as of a higher authority such as slaves regarding their owners as masters. The leaders’ integrity is displayed when given power, though their true character sometimes being difficult to identify immediately behind the set image displayed by all the ministers, sincere or hypocritical. One’s real character becomes evident by the fruit his life produces, and when he teaches by God’s leading, and not by ignorantly repeating others.

Eventually, the church learned to believe that freedom means being told what to do through laws and ordinances, staying within those ordinances to retain what they consider the freest position they could possibly live. In thinking that tradition outranks Scripture, their form of freedom is preserved by submitting to the laws inside their church, thereby maintaining a good standing inside their culture.

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified (Gal. 2:16).

In slavery, the one under control may well not realize the value of freedom, having known very little, if any, freedom in one’s life, possibly to the extent of not knowing it even exists because it’s never been within his reach. What may be believed to be true freedom is the teaching and security of the enclosed assembly, fearing ever being separated from it. While having a measure of safety in their enclosed lifestyle in opposition to what’s considered worldly, at the same time, their culture holds back people from growing, learning, and knowing how to live in proportion to the world.

The nineteenth century was a time when slavery was prevalent in America. At that time, many people, including churches, still upheld the right to keep black people like cattle, who were trained to do and be whatever their owners preferred. Often, slaves were even punished in the process of trying to live a Christian life by doing everything their masters required. Southern planters, struggling to justify the slave market, fought to maintain their kingdom by claiming their enslaved Africans were content and happy with their position. John Calhoun, being vice-president during John Quincy Adam’s presidency, asserted, There has never existed in civilized society in which one segment did not thrive upon the labor of another. As far back as one chooses to look, to ancient times, to biblical times, history bears this up. Slavery has always been with us and is neither sinful nor immoral. Rather, as war and antagonism and the natural states of man, so too slavery—as natural as it is inevitable.

It was also ill-advised to allow the slaves to learn to read. It was recognized that many who learned to read became knowledgeable about the freedom that was available for them, which lead to the escape of many of them. Those becoming literate and growing in knowledge were found to be difficult to maintain in the position of a slave, and great punishment was bestowed upon those that learned and then acted upon attained knowledge. One runaway slave was caught and then brought back to the plantation from which he had escaped. As punishment for this crime, and as a means to prevent him from escaping again, the slave master ordered a surgeon to amputate one of his legs. The surgeon refused to perform the brutal deed. Enraged, the master proceeded to sever the slave’s leg himself. Many other stories exist of slave owners treating their property cruelly to make them do what they chose.

Similar characteristics show their face inside a controlled structure of a man-made church, verbal abuse especially being prominent. A critical method for keeping people inside an ancestral system is keeping them ignorant, as it’s discovered that reading and searching for truth often leads to the breakthrough from time-honored traditions, as opposed to just taking for granted the word of all the other traditionalists.

Many Amish feel they have a lot of freedom to make the choices they want, yet their actions imply that they’re just doing what falls inside the jurisdiction built by the church. There are, however, many who do lead a happy lifestyle to a satisfactory extent, where they do genuinely enjoy life itself doing what they’re familiar with. They view many others as walking in deception if not doing what they know best. This culture leans greatly upon the feeling of safety of familiarity. In doing so, it’s hard to recognize the bondage of the very thing they trust their lives to.

The hardest place for the Amish to recognize their own level of bondage is while being right in the center of it. The higher the deception of bondage, the more people believe there is no deception, blinded to their slavery in the name of