The Pure Definition of Godliness

When that gunman captured an Amish school last Monday, killing as of now five children, there was during that horror an act of purity divinity.

13-year-old Marian Fisher ... appealed to Charles Carl Roberts IV to shoot her first because she thought it might allow younger girls to survive. ~ CNN

No violence, she did not attack the gunman. She did not rant or rage neither did she meekly submit. She just had calm courage. She boldly offered to sacrifice her life in an effort to save others.

Jesus is quoted saying "greater love has no man than to give his life for another." Mahatma Gandhi taught Ahimsa, the non-violent respect for all life. This young girl practiced their teachings with a purity that both men would have honored.

This is an age when most of the great religions on Earth are competing to see which can most effectively kill the most people in the name of God. In the Middle East, some imans are teaching the Jihad of Death. In Israel, oppressing Muslim Arabs has become an article of the faith; the more religious the Israeli the more forceful the oppression. American clergymen are preaching that hatred for gays, immigrants, and a broad spectrum of other humans is the only way to show a love for God. Yet, all of them have passed far from the teachings of their faith.

Viktor Frankl, writing of Holocaust survivers, observed that the most noble of concentration camp vicitms were the first to die. They were the ones who would sacrificed for others in a time and place when sacrifice meant quick death. He wrote, "the best of us did not return." Young Mirian was among the best of us.