War and Oppression are EVIL

War and Oppression are Evil.

I base this blog on a Christianity Today article (June 2015) titled "War Torn."  CT summarizes the essence of the article in one sentence: "PTSD is not just trauma of the Mind but trauma of the Soul."  To me, a key sentence is : "In 2012, the United States lost more active-duty troops to suicide than to combat in Afghanistan."

This article is about war-caused PTSD; it sees PTSD as more than psychological trauma.  It is also moral injury, soul trauma."

Warren Kinghorn is a psychiatrist who was treating Viet Nam veterans suffering from PTSD.  Kinghorn had been taught that PTSD was an anxiety disorder driven by "intense fear, helplessness, or horror."  "Kinghorn learned to give a quick PTSD diagnosis and apply a simple formula for treatment: Prescribe medication to blunt the fear, recommend social support, and refer the patient for talk therapy."

Kinghorn was later introduced to the writings of Jonathan Shay.  "Shay concluded that the psychological and moral injury sustained in combat destroys trust. . . . when the capacity for social trust is destroyed, all possibility of a flourishing human life is lost."

One veteran described himself as a person with "strong religious beliefs."  When he went to Vietnam, "I wasn't prepared for it at all. . . . It was all evil.  All evil. . . . I'm horrified at what I turned into.  What I was.  What I did."

Another veteran wrote:  "The spiritual and emotional foundations of the world disappeared and made it impossible for me to sleep the sleep of the just. . . . I have a feeling of intense betrayal."

It may be these veterans' nation and parents betrayed him; they took advantage of his youth, his patriotism and seduced him into fighting an unjust war.  Their definition of patriotism required that these veterans do unspeakable evil.  As a result, America has millions of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans trying to function as normal human beings but who are moral cripples.  Add to these veterans, the millions of Afro Americans, Indian Americans, Mexican Americans who are suffering from varying degrees of PTSD because of white oppression; they are seldom allowed the privilege of functioning as full-fledged human beings.

Kinghorn finally realized that PTSD was not primarily about fear, but was about "right and wrong."

It was about ethics, morality, spirituality.  This was missing from secular psychiatry.

Both war and oppression are EVIL; both cause TRAUMA; not only to the body and mind but also to the soul and spirit.  Both cause moral injury.

Thousand of years ago this truth was proclaimed again and again in the OT; there are 555 references to oppression in the OT.  This is how the Hebrew scholar Thomas Hanks describes, in one powerful sentence, the essence of oppression; "Oppression smashes the body and CRUSHES THE SPIRIT."
Crushing the spirit is another way of talking about what we moderns call PTSD.  Joy Leary, a black social worker, in the title of her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, captures this thought.  So does Exodus 6:9 when the Hebrew slaves could not believe the good news Moses had just delivered to them.

Where do we go from here?  Are there any solutions?  It seems as Americans we keep blundering from war to war, from one system of oppression to another.

After World War I, we insisted on reparations from the Germans which they paid but this demand was a heavy burden.  So when Hitler came along and promised that he would restore the glory of the fatherland, Germans followed this promised national Savior.  After World War II, we didn't make the same mistake.  Instead, America instituted the Marshall Plan, a way to help ruined Germany rebuild.  Germany is now a healthy prosperous nation and our friend.  We engaged in a form of community development.

Some radical suggestions for the future:

1.  Make community development a national goal, a patriotic act.
2.  Train as many community developers as soldiers.
3.  Put as many billions into community development as we do the military.

Our past approaches haven't worked very well so we need different strategies.