“Have you ever heard veterans tell people that unless you were with me you just don’t understand?... Warfighters tend to share with each other and severely distrust anyone that isn’t simply on the inside…. I am not saying that disrespectfully. I am trying to illustrate how incredibly primal the process is. I haven’t lived long enough to tell you if it ever goes away. I can tell you that from my time in the…VA hospital that World War II guys hang out with each other, Vietnam vets hang together, same with veterans of other campaigns….” (Boone Cutler, Callsign Voodoo; Traitmarker Books, p. 215).
I wish to thank the supporters of GWFW for giving us the opportunity to hear and share such stories as above from our veterans. Unless you have been there, you cannot begin to appreciate the challenges our men and women have faced in defending our nation and its way of life. Yet, you make it possible for us to hear such stories and reach out to these individuals with the healing and life-changing message of God’s word to these warriors.
Moral and spiritual injuries result when military personnel are exposed to events that conflict with their values and beliefs.How do soldiers face ethical dilemmas such as killing the enemy, deaths of non-combatants, witnessing and being unable to help ill and wounded women and children, and to face other ethical situations? The fact is, as Boone Cutler expresses above, the general population, in religious communities and other public gatherings, do not hear about such, simply because most veterans do not talk about these situations.In addition, while most veterans love God and Jesus, typically they avoid spiritual communities.The ones we do meet, generally, have formulated a way to cope with such injuries by avoiding discussion and other coping mechanisms. Our churches and society have mostly avoided talking about the spiritual effects of war, favoring clinical approaches that pathologize individual warriors.
Again, this is where you, the reader, and supporters of GWFW, play such an important role.You make it possible for us to reach out to our veterans, in various communities, to provide safe places for these wonderful men and women to talk through their various challenges.Thank you for entrusting us with the responsibility of assisting in restoring veterans’ core relationships with God, self, family, and others. – Tom Seals