Amish understanding of life comes from the New Testament, that´s what they stady at school, preach in church services or sing at home. They don't refuse technology as a whole, but only those developments that goes against their believes. Their possition towards technology, electricity or communication for instance, it is very different from ours, but if you take the time to investigate their reasons, it actually makes sense.
So we went to ask them why is there such a difference and here are some of the responses:
Us: Why is that you don't have electricity at home? How do you do without light?
Amish: We refuse to be connected to other houses permanently. To our believes, if we keep connected to those who sin, the sin would be share and you become a sinner too. However, we do have light at home, it might be not be the same, but we use battery lamps, propane engines for the washing machine or the fridge, or even disel engines to milk our cows, water our gardens, etc.
Amish: We use telephones to communicate between us, the only requirement is that the phone cannot be placed at home, for the same reason we don't have electricity. It's all about the wire world connection, so we normally place a phone box outside our hauses, which is still on our land, but not linked to the house.
Us: And what about a mobile phone?
Amish: Well, there is a discussion going on within the community about the mobile allowance. It is trully wireless, however it also brings along all sort of connections. That's a tricky one, but Amish member do refuse to have it.
Us: Can Amish members drive a car?
Amish: Bapticed members cannot use other transports than feet traction. To us it is meaningful to always keep feets on the ground and if its not litelary ours, it has to be horse feet. We can only use other transports in case of vital need, as when we migrate from old Germany to USA.
Amish members normally move by buggy riding or what they call scooters, see iur experience with their transport for reference.
Those few questions made us open our eyes to the the Amish relation to tecnology, as we said before, they follow their believes, while try to make their life easy. Technology can be considered a tool as far as it doesn't generate a conflic with any religion aspect.
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