I still receive at least one email each week from wives of service members who have not reached out to anyone before, looking for suggestions regarding how to help their husbands, their families, and themselves with PTSD. The emails I get, however, are of a distinct nature that may be separate from what some other people or organization receive. The emails I get are specifically from people who have sought out help from their locals churches, and aren't getting the help they need. If this sounds like you, please keep reading.
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| courtesy: Google images |
I want to touch base on how often the Bible speaks of war in the Old Testament. It's no strange thing of course, that there were many, many battles in the Old Testament, ultimately for the preservation of the genealogical line that God would bring forth His Son into the world. Countless individuals committed great sins, countless were ruled by their lusts and various forms of idolatry, and countless tried to completely destroy God's chosen people. Nothing new about that. I already knew it. What struck my interest was how the Bible made mention so often of the men of valor, the men or war, the men of strength, and the need to take courage and obey God, for He is the LORD and there is no other. King David, as many know, dealt with the bulk of the battles, and then his son Solomon was promised the throne after him and God blessed Solomon's reign with peace throughout the land so that he and skilled workers could rebuild the temple. It was intense and required absolute dedication. David's reign required no less dedication, however. He was a dedicated warrior. Did the battles he endured hold him back? The answer is yes. The words of the following psalm show keen resemblance to many PTSD symptoms.
Psalm 69
"Save Me, O God"
To the choirmaster: according to Lilies. Of David.
1 Save me, O God!For the waters have come up to my neck.2 I sink in deep mire,where there is no foothold;I have come into deep waters,and the flood sweeps over me.3 I am weary with my crying out;my throat is parched.My eyes grow dimwith waiting for my God.
4 More in number than the hairs of my headare those who hate me without cause;mighty are those who would destroy me,those who attack me with lies.What I did not stealmust I now restore?5 O God, you know my folly;the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.
6 Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me,O Lord God of hosts;let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me,O God of Israel.7 For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach,that dishonor has covered my face.8 I have become a stranger to my brothers,an alien to my mother's sons.
9 For zeal for your house has consumed me,and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.10 When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting,it became my reproach.11 When I made sackcloth my clothing,I became a byword to them.12 I am the talk of those who sit in the gate,and the drunkards make songs about me.
13 But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.At an acceptable time, O God,in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.14 Deliver mefrom sinking in the mire;let me be delivered from my enemiesand from the deep waters.15 Let not the flood sweep over me,or the deep swallow me up,or the pit close its mouth over me.
16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.17 Hide not your face from your servant;for I am in distress; make haste to answer me.18 Draw near to my soul, redeem me;ransom me because of my enemies!
19 You know my reproach,and my shame and my dishonor;my foes are all known to you.20 Reproaches have broken my heart,so that I am in despair.I looked for pity, but there was none,and for comforters, but I found none.21 They gave me poison for food,and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.
22 Let their own table before them become a snare;and when they are at peace, let it become a trap.23 Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see,and make their loins tremble continually.24 Pour out your indignation upon them,and let your burning anger overtake them.25 May their camp be a desolation;let no one dwell in their tents.26 For they persecute him whom you have struck down,and they recount the pain of those you have wounded.27 Add to them punishment upon punishment;may they have no acquittal from you.28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living;let them not be enrolled among the righteous.
29 But I am afflicted and in pain;let your salvation, O God, set me on high!
30 I will praise the name of God with a song;I will magnify him with thanksgiving.31 This will please the Lord more than an oxor a bull with horns and hoofs.32 When the humble see it they will be glad;you who seek God, let your hearts revive.33 For the Lord hears the needyand does not despise his own people who are prisoners.
34 Let heaven and earth praise him,the seas and everything that moves in them.35 For God will save Zionand build up the cities of Judah,and people shall dwell there and possess it;36 the offspring of his servants shall inherit it,and those who love his name shall dwell in it.
David fought with everyone he needed to: Anyone who was a threat to his people. He won his battles and he knew well the effects of war. He also wrote the Psalms. Worthy of mention is that clearly, even with David's life-long problems, he served and sought God continuously. Noteworthy given the stigma our society is faced with, what David went through has no bearing on the validity of the Scriptures. I know it's common for people to think that those with PTSD are less capable of doing jobs well, or even continuing to fight in combat, but in Bible this just isn't the case at all. Despite David's bouts of depression and anguish over what he saw, heard, and did, God carried him through.
21 When my soul was embittered,when I was pricked in heart,22 I was brutish and ignorant;I was like a beast toward you.23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;you hold my right hand.24 You guide me with your counsel,and afterward you will receive me to glory.25 Whom have I in heaven but you?And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.26 My flesh and my heart may fail,but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.28 But for me it is good to be near God;I have made the Lord God my refuge,that I may tell of all your works.
Psalm 73:21-28 (ESV)
The women I spoke to about this at church asked me if I could name some of the verses that really stuck out to me, but I could not name them off the top of my head at that time. I was more impressed by entire books, rather than verses here and there. 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings (many more battles and many more kings than just David), and 1 Chronicles each have so much to tell. 1 and 2 Kings actually make mention of kings who began to reign at 7 and 8 years old. Can you imagine what they went through?! Military tactics are shared, occupations of spies are reported, types of weapons, positions of forward operating bases, the food they ate, the time at which men were to go and fight and then return to their loved ones, the armor they wore, the numbers divisions contained, the names of the leaders, the amount of deaths, the agony they went through while and after seeing the battle brothers taken down in front of their eyes, the overwhelming feelings of helplessness when faced with an army a thousand times their size, accounts of David's superiors betraying him and lying to him, hunting him down, etc etc. All this is to say, Post-Traumatic Stress is not a new thing.
So many are in search of education about how to help people, and having read through those books I mentioned, I want to encourage others to read them with hearts open to learning, because there is no place better to learn how to love than through the Author of it. The Old Testament is full of examples of mercy, grace, love, faithfulness, forgiveness, healing, compassion, justice, and power, and because God is unchanging, there is no reason to ignore what is written in order to find what healing we seek. The fullness of the gospel remains the same for everyone, regardless of illness, injury, background, literacy level, color, creed, ethnicity, status, etc etc. I don't know of any Bible studies that focus on the educating believers about the military and war-wounds through the Old Testament, but how fascinating would that be!? Don't ask me to write one. I'm not that talented [yet].
Anyway, it all got me thinking that with all of the wars, and then all of the psalms David wrote about his life, his battles, and his enemies after him, and how intensely desperate he was for God's love and sovereignty in the midst of his enemies, for justice, for truth, for hope, and for shame to be brought upon those who accused him wrongfully, David would have been quite hard-pressed to escape the normal and prolonged response to traumatic events that we commonly refer to as PTSD. So why is it that people are so quick to neglect the Old Testament for wisdom related to PTSD recovery? David clung to God. God was his escape, his fortress of strength, his solitude, his help, his comfort, and yet it was God who allowed all of the trials David went through so that David would turn his heart away from sin and stay focused on God. He had regrets. Many of them. He faced betrayal. He sinned and his sins affected everyone who was under him: thousands of people. He repented, though, and even though war was his life, he sought after God.
Now, lot of Christian churches these days are filled with women, or perhaps better stated, they are dominated in population by women. It relates to what I'm saying, so I want to ask, why is that? The top two reasons women have expressed to me in emails that their husbands don't want to go attend church are, first, large crowds and, second, failure from clergy to understand or even seek to understand PTSD, which I find odd since hints of it are popping up all over the Old Testament while I read. But it's not just PTSD-awareness lacking. There's a substantial lack of understanding about the mind-set of the military and the nature of war, despite how many pastors have tried to compare it to Paul's proclamation in Ephesians chapter six, that "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (v.6). We know about war in the physical, but it's also spiritual and emotional. Many women sense the battle in the spiritual realm and also in their husband's lives, but they don't know what to do about it, so, they turn to the church for help and encouragement. They should!
But there is an important third problem to communicate adding to the dominance of women in church, and it is the emasculation of men, which is partially to the shame of the women. Women desire affirmation and encouragement of their femininity and in the process, ask men to relate to them the way only women are made to relate to them; like women. This is wrong, as men were not designed by God to act like women. I'm not suggesting that men don't get emotional or that they don't have a need to talk things through, but that they do it differently than women do. Many churches now are very interested in catering to demands of women since there are more of them in the seats than men, in a sense caving to the feminist movement under pressure, and therefore end up subverting the role of godly men and demanding that men be more sensitive to women, and less manly. This is actually destroying the femininity of women, however, because true masculinity compliments femininity. That's how God set it up. Adam loved Eve. Men are to love their wives. Christ loves his Bride, the Body of Christ. See?
Think about it. If the church doesn't promote masculine things, doesn't preach on the goodness of being a godly man, and doesn't encourage men to be men, and furthermore, the women want the men to be more like women, it's no wonder the men feel like misfits. If the men don't have their needs met by the church, they don't desire to go that extra mile or two for their women, or go to church. After all, church is supposed to teach godly principles and challenge believers to seek righteousness, right? So the men might go, maybe even in the midst of great crises of their personal faith. They might very well sit through sermons every week to make their wives happy, and maybe to hopefully hear something that will help. But if the church is interested in building up men that act like women, and singling the good men out, it ought not to come as a surprise when men would rather do what makes them comfortable, since women often cater to their feelings, or simply do what is more manly: Avoid church.
All of this has to do with PTSD and the Old Testament, because methods of worship is expounded upon, established, and exemplified, especially in the lives of the men who were in battle day in and day out, and the wives the men took for themselves were constantly needing to adjust and readjust and still respect their husbands. The Israelites could not just 'up and leave' when things got bad. Those who did, I should say, were punished, either for forsaking God and chasing idols, or for committing acts of sin that they were all told were against God's law. Churches keep forsaking the Word when they don't counsel and uplift both men and women the way God desires to be counseled and are made to be uplifted. (Yes, there was counseling in the Old Testament, too.) We're no better than the Israelites were and really, we're no different. Sure, we have culture and language boundaries, but the heart and mind issues we deal with are not new.
I'm not saying these things happen in all congregations or all denominations. Certainly not. And in mine, I know of plenty of godly men. I am saying that these are problems, and they've been deeply-rooted problems in the lives of almost every struggling believer I've talked to who deals with PTSD. Do women want to hear this? No. Does it make them feel good? Nope. But it is true, and the truth is what counts. We need resolutions, and we don't have to go too far to find them.
There are lots of women in the church seeking a god who will not lead them to do anything but what they're comfortable with. They're seeking the affection that they sometimes miss at home because they inadvertently invite distance through their body language and irreverent attitudes toward their husbands. A woman who fails to respect her husband also fails to respect her Savior.... but churches don't often teach this. They coddle and comfort the afflicted but don't afflict the comfortable, if that makes sense. Women miss out on affection from their husbands who are taken captive by the battles they're fighting and exhausted from, and when their husbands don't communicate the way they desire or seek the help they believe the men need, the women reach their peaks and eventually lash out. Where is the church in this? Well, this usually happens after church. Maybe even in the church parking lot. Granted, lashing out looks different for different women. Some isolate, some blurt out (vent) aggravation, some seek other forms of self-medicating (e.g. travel, shopping, food, gossip, tv/media). Women express a desire to be understood and to understand (as do most men), but what cannot be overlooked is that women are programmed differently than men. Women more often gravitate toward emotional highs and the churches know this. In fact, there are many sooth-saying churches who sideswipe gullible women, knowing their weaknesses.
Men who are more like the manly men of the Old Testament aren't going to embrace worship like that. They see it as a show, and they see it as fake. (To their credit, it is fake sometimes. Simply put, there exist in this country many lousy churches.) So when one of these military-trained manly men (or even men who are emasculated and desire to be trained up in true biblical masculinity) is forced to listen to a sermon about the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) without being able to make the connection to the masculine side of God that's all over the Bible, cover to cover, and the fullness of the covenant, as well as his own military experience, and is made to feel amiss because women are more interested in hearing about the love and compassion of God than the justice and wrath of God, they are looked at as "PTS victim in pew 7" or "misunderstood war hero," just to go back to their homes with their wives and remain stuck in that irritation of being the odd duck out, it's really no wonder at all that men don't want to go to church, and I don't blame them one bit. These are my observations.
Military men desire environments where they can be men, and many will admit that men seemed far more masculine in the Old Testament than the new, however without understanding the relationship of the Old Testament to the fulfillment of the covenant in Christ Jesus in the New Testament, it's easy to see why they seem that way. And although this article is written for the military community, I firmly believe that it's not only military men who desire environments where they can be men and grow in their masculinity. I wish more pastors would talk about this, but even still, it's not hard to open up a Bible or use the internet to read the books of Romans and Hebrews. It's all explained in there.
What can be done about this? People are making a lot of money off of forgotten information and are daily rediscovering old news. Something crucial to consider is that we have examples of steadfast determination and desperate searches for renewal of strength, of endurance, of happiness, of lasting joy, and of hope, and not a single obstacles we face is unbeknownst to Almighty God. Men can rejoice in this. So can women. While we have a tendency to become exasperated about our struggles and forget who God is in the midst of them, as long as we are alive, we have opportunity to turn to God, who has the answers. David recorded his prayers, his afflictions, and his answers.
What you can do, if you're searching for help from your church, or maybe even if you're part of church leadership, is to talk to one another, to find out what the needs and concerns are, what is understood, what is misunderstood, pray together (!!!), and see if you cannot approach the needs entirely through Scripture, fellowship, and through instruction and discipleship. Ultimately, if a person is not walking with the Lord, that's got to be the first topic of discussion. Get to know each other. Christians don't necessarily need to like every believer they meet, but, they represent Christ whether or not like or get along with a person, so love is required and self-sacrificial service is required as well. Talk about the issues struggling believers have inside your churches, and talk about what you wish was different. Talk about the military!! Talk about what you've been through, what you haven't, your regrets, your highs, your lows, and even talk about your issues in your marriages. You can't really get to the heart of a problem if you don't talk about it. Or, if you're unable to elaborate at this point, talk about why you can't talk. The goal is Christ-likeness, and when we are unpacking our baggage, dealing with sins between one another, and purging our bitterness, contempt, and maybe even hatred over issues or people in our lives, things get messy and uncomfortable, so forgiveness must be sought after, and grace must be shown, as well as reconciliation, so that love may grow and not be stunted. You are to treat others the way you desire to be treated, according to Scripture: and not just the verses you enjoy, because it's possible that you don't know the correct context of the verses you cling to. Learn. Grow together. Work through your troubles. God will judge you according to your works.
My continual prayer is that women will seek to understand the masculine side of God as much as they wish to be hugged by worship songs in church, that men will be accepting of their wives' needs and that they will seek to satisfy them, never excusing themselves from the roles God has given them just because they're too hard, that wives will refrain from raising their voices at their husbands before taking a deep breath and praying to God for wisdom and understanding, patiently enduring their husband's seasons of not wanting to go to church, that husbands will cultivate and fight for a desire to know God more, according to the Bible, not just through the verses that please them, but also the verses that are confusing or convicting, and lead their wives toward Him as well, being open about their struggles. I pray that wives, when their husbands are open, will not betray them as they take small steps to rebuild trust and open communication. And I also pray that churches will recognize that if there is a need in their church, they need to be attentive and tend to the needs of the people. If one person is not gifted with wisdom, discernment, or knowledge, another person may be, but faith in Jesus, a love for Him, and a desire for unity are common bonds. All parts of the body need to work together in order to be health, in order to stand, and in order to flourish. I pray that God's sovereign grace and mercy would grow abundantly in the hearts and minds of those who are of Him and that people would seek to live out the Word before their spouse, does rather than desiring to be served with God's blessings first, and therefore killing off the notion that they deserve wonderful things for all their efforts (the killing of pride, essentially), esteeming one another higher than themselves, and I pray that marriages would be saved and not just be saved, but that they would help save other marriages, too, that men will be masculine men, women will be feminine women, and that God will be glorified always. Amen.
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