From the Peace Barn: Amish or Ahamish?

By David Kirkwood

May 1, 2022

After the publication of my article in January’s Amish Voice (“From the Peace Barn: Amish and Born Again”), I received phone calls from readers in North Carolina, Indiana, Virginia and Wyoming. I enjoyed every conversation. Some were with Amish folks and some were with Ahamish folks. I’ll explain the difference later. I first want to continue from my previous article explaining a few more reasons I admire the Amish people whom I know.

My wife and I live in the heart of Pennsylvania’s third-largest Amish community in a remodeled 1890 barn that became our home about a year ago. Most all of the remodeling work was done by skilled local Amish craftsman who have all become our friends.

Our Amish community is one of the more conservative ones. Many things are forbidden that are permitted in other Amish communities, such as personal phones (community pay phones are permitted). Nevertheless, as seems to be the case in every Amish group, our Amish neighbors are hard-working, honest and considerate. For example, I noticed several years ago—when we first began remodeling our old barn—that whenever I walked into a room where my Amish carpenters were working, they would immediately switch from speaking Pennsylvania Dutch to English so that I could understand their ongoing conversation. I never had to worry that they were secretly talking negatively about me in a language that I don’t understand!

I also admire Amish families I’ve met. They often have lots of children, and those children are well-behaved. From a young age they are involved in family chores. The elderly are respected, and infirm parents are cared for in the homes of their adult children. These are all good things.

Although I am sure Amish families and communities face many of the normal struggles of human relationships, they seem to maintain a decent degree of harmony. If everyone in the world were Amish, no doubt our planet would be a much better place.

Among those who phoned me in response to my previous article in The Amish Voice were (1) current Amish, (2) Amish who are considering becoming Mennonite, and (3) former Amish who are striving to serve God. Each had a different story to tell.

One, who was formerly Amish, told me that he didn’t want to ever leave the Amish, but he was excommunicated because he became interested in learning more about the Bible, so he participated in Bible study and was subsequently born again (something Jesus said one must experience in order to enter the kingdom of heaven).

One, who is considering becoming Mennonite, has been having trouble with his local ministers because of his perception of their unequal application of their Ordnung among church members. His adult children left long ago and joined a Mennonite church.

One, who is still Amish, is greatly burdened for his Amish neighbors and community because he has been born again and is concerned that most of them are not.

All three of the people that I have just described are among the “Ahamish.” That term, of course, is one that I invented. So, who are the Ahamish? You are probably familiar with the expression, “Aha!” When someone suddenly discovers something they hadn’t previously realized, they often say, “Aha!” Ahamish people are Amish folks who have done just that. They have discovered something they previously didn’t realize.

In every case, Ahamish people previously didn’t realize their need to be born again. They knew they had been born into Amish culture and were expected to conform in every detail. They knew about the Bible and they were familiar with many of its stories. They had been baptized as teenagers when they made their vows. They attended church gatherings every other week all their lives.

In every case, however, they ultimately came to a realization that they were life-long sinners who deserved punishment, and that there was no hope of them earning salvation and eternal life. They discovered that God loved them so much that He gave His only Son to die for their sins on the cross. They came to believe Jesus’ promise that, “Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). And when they truly believed in Him, not just said they believed in Him as they did when they made their vows to the church, but truly believed that He is God’s Son and the Lord, they repented of their sins and experienced a spiritual rebirth that transformed their lives.

What changed? They immediately experienced a joy and peace they had never known before. They knew all their sins had been forgiven and that God’s Holy Spirit had come to live inside them to empower them to live pure and holy lives. They knew they were children of God and that He had become their spiritual Father. They knew they had eternal life. They wanted others to enjoy the same wonderful blessings, so they started telling their Amish family members and friends about what had happened to them, because born-again people cannot keep quiet about the miracle they’ve experienced. That is when some started getting into trouble. Some were eventually excommunicated.

Please understand that a person can be Amish, but not be born again. Please also understand that one can be Amish and also be born again if their particular Amish community allows it. I know of such communities, and there is one about 30 minutes from where I live.

Beyond that, according to the Dordrecht Confession (to which all Amish groups subscribe), one is actually not truly Amish unless one is born again. Following is the sixth article of the Dordrecht Confession:

We believe and confess, that, since the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, and, therefore, prone to all unrighteousness, sin, and wickedness, the first lesson of the precious New Testament of the Son of God is repentance and reformation of life, and that, therefore, those who have ears to hear, and hearts to understand, must bring forth genuine fruits of repentance, reform their lives, believe the Gospel, eschew evil and do good, desist from unrighteousness, forsake sin, put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness: for, neither baptism, supper, church [membership], nor any other outward ceremony, can without faith, regeneration, change or renewing of life, avail anything to please God or to obtain of Him any consolation or promise of salvation; but we must go to God with an upright heart, and in perfect faith, and believe in Jesus Christ, as the Scripture says, and testifies of Him; through which faith we obtain forgiveness of sins, are sanctified, justified, and made children of God, yea, partake of His mind, nature, and image, as being born again of God from above, through incorruptible seed.

The Confession’s sixth article mentions both “being born again” and “regeneration.” Regeneration is another word for being born again. Yet one of the Ahamish folks who phoned me explained that many of the Amish people whom he knows become very troubled when he tells them about being born again. I asked him why they would be troubled about something that is clearly mentioned as a necessity by Jesus in John 3:1-8, by the apostle Peter in 1 Peter 1:3, and in Article 6 of the Dordrecht Confession. He said that they are tragically ignorant of those facts. I could not help but wonder why.

Another way of describing the difference between being Amish and Ahamish is that one can be Amish simply by an outward conformity to Amish culture. Being Ahamish, however, is not external, but internal. An Ahamish person may appear, on the outside, to be just like every other Amish person, but on the inside, he or she has become “a new creature” in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).

Everyone needs an internal change of the heart to be accepted by God. Remember, God said, “man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). God also said, “I the Lord search the heart” (Jer. 17:10.) What does God see when He looks at and searches a heart that has not been born again? He said through Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9).

When God asked “who can know it?” regarding people’s “deceitful” and “desperately wicked” hearts, He obviously wasn’t questioning His own knowledge. He knows every heart, which is why He declared that human hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. Those who don’t know that are those who are deceived by their desperately wicked hearts.

And although I wrote in both my last article and this one about the many good qualities I’ve observed in Amish communities, I write now with tears in my eyes that I’ve also seen another side—but only to a small degree that God has seen it. I’m talking about some Amish hearts. When Amish people persecute, shun, and excommunicate other Amish people because they’ve been born again, they show that their hearts are deceived and desperately wicked. They show that they are not born again. They are acting just like the Catholics and Protestants hundreds of years ago who hated the original Anabaptists because all of them were born again! What a tragedy that the formerly persecuted Anabaptists have now, in some cases, become the persecutors!

Yet through His great mercy offered through the sacrificial death of His spotless Son, God offers to anyone a new, pure heart, a heart that wants to obey Him:

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you… And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezek. 36:26-27).

The apostle Paul was one who certainly received a new heart from God, and Ahamish people can all identify with him. Paul was initially a very religious Jew who persecuted the early Christians, all of whom were of Jewish origin, just like him. He persecuted his own people because he thought he was right and they were wrong. God opened his eyes to his own deceitful and wicked heart. He then realized it was the exact opposite of what he had thought! The people  that he thought were wrong were actually right, and he, who previously thought he was right, was actually wrong! Those whom he was persecuting were righteous, and he was unrighteous!

After Paul’s conversion, religious Jews starting persecuting him. He tried to help them see that true Jews (just like true Amish people) are those who, like him, had been born again:

“For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God” (Rom. 2:28-29).

For the most part, the Jews in Paul’s day were outwardly religious and outwardly circumcised. The apostle John wrote about them, “They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12:43). That is, they lived their daily lives for the approval of their fellow Jews, just as so many Amish people are focused on maintaining the approval of other Amish people.

Notice, however, that Paul believed that “true Jews” have “circumcised hearts,” a phrase that refers to being born again by the work of the Holy Spirit and the subsequent inward transformation. True Jews, as Paul wrote, are not seeking the praise of people, but the praise of God. And it is no different for true Amish people. And that is why true Amish people—the Ahamish people as I’ve been calling them—are willing to forsake the approval of other Amish people if necessary. What matters to them is the approval of God, and they strive to keep His laws rather than man-made rules that can’t be found anywhere in the Bible.

You can take a pig, scrub it clean, tie a pretty bow around its neck, and sprinkle it with perfume...but it will still be a pig! That is the picture of the religious person—whether Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, or Amish—who has not been born again. Externally, they look good. But internally, they have the same old nature.

All religious people who have not been born again—if they will be honest in their hearts—know that they stand condemned before the God who searches and knows everyone’s heart, because they know their inward thoughts that they hide from everyone else. They also know—if they are honest with their hearts—that they are putting on a show for all of the other religious people in their group whose approval they seek. Again, this is true of all religious people, whether they are Jewish, Protestant, Catholic or Amish. If they aren’t aware of what I’ve just described, it is one more proof of what God said through Jeremiah about how deceitful and desperately wicked human hearts are. Pride is often what blinds them.

Do not think that I am pointing a finger because I don’t have personal experience of that very thing myself. I was once a religious church-attender who had fooled myself that I was a pretty good person. When I was confirmed in my church as a teenager, I even confessed publicly that I believed in Jesus Christ. Looking back now, however, I realized that I was just saying words as I attempted to please my parents and the other people at my church. I didn’t really believe in Jesus, and the reason I am sure of it now is because He was not my Lord. I was striving to please others, not Him.

One day, however, God opened my eyes, and I finally saw myself as God saw me—as a proud, self-deceived hypocrite with a desperately wicked heart. What a glorious day that was! I realized that I had nothing good in myself to offer God - and so I feebly responded to His call to repent of my sins and truly believe in Jesus. When I did, my life was dramatically changed. I had no idea at the time that I had been born again, because I had never heard that phrase or read it in the Bible. But I knew that I was a different person.

Like all people who are born again, I now look at my life in two sections: before I was born again and after I was born again. I started reading the Bible and I slowly learned what had happened to me. I eventually realized that I had been born again, and that God’s Holy Spirit was living in me. I started telling other people, because I could not keep quiet. As the apostle Paul wrote, “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, ‘I believed, and therefore have I spoken’; we also believe, and therefore speak” (2 Cor. 4:13). That is one test of an authentic new birth. Born-again people are concerned about other people who are not born again, because being born again is a requirement for heaven according to Jesus. If you are not concerned about other people being born again, that is a sure sign that you are not born again yourself.

What about you? Have you been born again? Are you religious or righteous? Do you truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, as evidenced by your desire to please Him, even if you must forfeit the approval of others? Are you a cleaned-up pig or a “new creation in Christ”? Are you Amish or Ahamish?

The good news is that you can be born again today. You could start by praying for God to help you see your heart as He sees it. Once He does, you will be ready to cast yourself onto the Lord Jesus Christ completely for forgiveness, salvation and a new life. The Lord is full of mercy! He will not turn you away!

If you are already Ahamish or have just started your new Ahamish life, I would love to hear about it. You can call me at: (412) 722-3075

or write to me at:

David Kirkwood,

P.O. Box 33

Smicksburg, PA 16256

 

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