Rumspringa
“Rumspringa — derived from the “Deitsch” (Amish dialect of German) term for ‘running around’. — generally refers to a period of adolescence for members of the Amish religious denomination - a subsect of the Anabaptist Christian movement - that begins around the age of sixteen and ends when a youth chooses baptism within the Amish church or instead leaves the community.” (Source: Wikipedia)
I watched a special on the Amish tonight where they followed several Amish kids for a year as they decided to stay within the Amish community, or to leave. It was fascinating, but incredibly sad.
Seems a horrible decision to have to make as a teenager - whether or not to choose your family over the freedom of the outside world, a mutually exclusive decision. On top of that, the kids who left the Amish way of life in talking with the reporter didn’t even know or understand how a person gets into heaven according to the Bible. After spending the first 17 years of your life in an Amish family, I’m very surprised they missed that…
They actually had no clue after 17 years? Either that was some seriously bad parenting or the kids were …I am not going to say it because an argument always ensues and nobody ever wins that one… I can’t wrap my mind around how one would be able to miss that in an Amish community, its not like they have distractions more prominent than milking the cows or raising a barn or two.