How military chaplains are finding new ways to treat vets with invisible wounds

[jwirr]

4. So we (and I use we as meaning our government) send them to war and we are then supposed to

ignore one of the biggest problems they have? Guilt.

Every child grows up knowing that to kill is wrong - regardless if it is a religious child or not. Can you imagine what it was like in any of our modern wars to get to the country we are fighting in and realize that we should not have been there in the first place. I watch my uncle from the Korean War go through this and it has happened in all the other wars as well.

When you were drafted you had no choice so you could blame the government but since Vietnam we have had choices. People go for various reasons but they believe they are going to help in some situation the government says we have to deal with. Most of them get to know some of the people, talk with them, and finally realize that there is no reason to be there. That is when the moral injury starts. Every time they have to kill someone it eats at them because the little child inside still knows that killing is wrong.

They are doing more than violating the Golden Rule. They are violating their own belief system. They at the least need to be able to forgive themselves or they are not going to be able to live with the knowledge that they are lost. That they no longer have any foundation to stand on. Why do you think so many of them are committing suicide.

As to who can help. Well I can't imagine an officer taking the time to listen and then keeping it quiet. And one thing a chaplin has been trained to do is forgiveness. They have the time and the training why not them? Forgiveness is not justification. It is the realization that you have done something very wrong and that you now have to live with it. It is the struggle to learn how to live with it.