The battle outside and the battle inside

PHOTO PROVIDED
Dr. Mark Boyea

Far too many times, it’s the battle outside. But also far too many times, it’s the battle inside that claims a life …

Back in 2008, after entering a dealership in New Jersey in search of a new car, I was assigned to a salesman who, in the course of conversation during my test drive, mentioned to me that this was his first job since leaving the military. I asked him about his time in the service, and he told me he had done tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

And then, he asked me the question — the one which tends to suddenly make the conversation awkward whenever I give an honest answer, especially at a party.

“So what do you do?”

I said, “I’m a minister.”

Right on cue … silence.

But this time the silence felt different. I had the sense that there was something else coming. And there was.

A few moments later, he looked back at me and asked, “Do you think God still loves me? Cause we did some ugly stuff over there.”

As he spoke to me a bit more about the internal emotional and spiritual struggle he was going through, it seemed that he was describing what Veterans Administration psychologist Jonathan Shay referred to in the 1990s as “moral injury,” the term Shay coined to describe the psychological, social, cultural and spiritual harm caused by traumatic experiences like combat. Shay observed from his years of working with veterans that many had come to question their own moral and ethical standing, even if they felt that what they did was necessary in the larger sense. Shay observed that they would often reach the point where they would wonder or doubt, for example, if God still loved them or could possibly forgive them.

Shay, like many other mental health experts since, came to see that moral injury left many of those who returned from combat less than whole, in need of help and particularly vulnerable to things like depression, anxiety and even suicide.

Just a few days ago, we commemorated Memorial Day in our nation, a day when we remember and honor those whose lives were claimed in service to our nation. But at the same time, let’s not forget the ones who serve, as well as the many first responders in our nation, who survive physically, but are and have been left less than whole psychologically and spiritually from that service.

Remember them, help see that they get the assistance they need, and remind them that yes, God still loves them. Just as the early Christian leader Paul reminds us all.

Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans, written to the early churches in and around Rome and considered to be his most comprehensive theological statement, that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing. That statement is in the very middle — in the very heart of Paul’s comprehensive theological statement.

So “Yes,” I told my car salesman. “Yes, I do believe God still loves you.”

I don’t know, but I hope he came to believe it too. Otherwise, the moral injury he struggled with may have claimed his life, if not physically, then emotionally and spiritually.

Because while far too many times it’s the battle outside, far too many times it’s also the battle inside that claims a life.

The Rev. Dr. Mark Boyea is senior minister at the Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ.