Killing Takes Its Toll on America's Soldiers

Many Christians look upon members of our military with admiration. After all, they are making the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedoms here at home. Those freedoms are too numerous to list, but a few spring immediately to mind: our freedom to be sexually harassed at the airport, our freedom to have half of our income confiscated by the government, and our freedom to have our guns taken from us.

Fox News reports that all this killing in the name of protecting freedom is taking its toll:

With American troops at war for more than a decade, an unprecedented number of studies are looking into war zone psychology.

And clinicians suspect that some troops are suffering from an emotional problem they call "moral injuries" — wounds from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates their moral code.

A moral injury tortures the conscience. Its symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage.

Do you think it's possible that these moral injuries are due to the fact that some soldiers have come to realize that what they have done is wrong? Killing in an unjust war is nothing more than murdering on behalf of the state, and it saddens me that more Christians aren't speaking up about it. Instead, we praise our soldiers for what they do, and we continue to elect political leaders who promise even more killing.

To make matters worse, we have now made it official policy to send women off to kill and die for the state. Such is the result of our love of war.

The Bible speaks of government using violence to repel evil, reminding us that a just ruler "is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer" (Romans 13:4). But what happens when that ruler governs unjustly? What are we Christians to do when men, women, and children who never posed a threat to us are targeted for destruction? Whatever we do or say, I cannot imagine that joining in as instruments of that destruction is an option.

How much more death and destruction will we tolerate? I hope and pray we will repent and learn to trust in the Prince of Peace.

(via The Militant Pacifist)