Posted by Benjamin on: 05.16.2007 /
Newsweek ran an insightful article this last week about how the war in Iraq is causing some U.S. soldiers to lose their Christian faith. The piece centers on the story of army chaplain Roger Benimoff, who shared with Newsweek the personal journal he kept through two deployments in Iraq and his current service as a chaplain at Walter Reed Medical Center. Roger has gone through what sounds like quite a wrenching of his faith, as he had to perform more memorial services than regular chapel services. He saw that the reality of war forced many soldiers to reevaluate the faith they had embraced back in the relative wealth and security of the United States.
Some quotes:
[He] begins his time in Iraq brimming with faith and a sense of devotion that carries him into a second tour. “My heart is filled with prayer and God is giving me a discerning spirit,” he writes at the start of that later deployment. “The spiritual battle I am engaged in is a minute-by-minute war.” He is “on fire for God.”Countless soldiers—not just chaplains—have struggled with how to reconcile a God of love with a God who allows the terror of conflict. For centuries theologians and philosophers have grappled with ideas of “just war”: thou shalt not kill, but under certain conditions—to prevent wider bloodshed and suffering—slaughter by armies is acceptable.
He invites 22-year-old Army Specialist Brent Hendrix, a Southern Baptist, to talk. Hendrix lost his right leg, and suffered multiple other injuries when an IED hit his vehicle last June in Al Anbar province.—He talks with Benimoff about NASCAR—and later about how there’s no time to think of commandments like “Thou shalt not kill” when enemies are shooting at you.
Benimoff’s journal ends Jan. 22 of this year. The last lines read: “I do not want anything to do with God. I am sick of religion. It is a crutch for the weak … We make God into what we need for the moment. I hate God. I hate all those who try to explain God when they really don’t know.” By late March, during his first interview with NEWSWEEK, he was recovering his faith but the pain had not subsided. “The symptoms are still there; this past year has been the most challenging of my life,” he says. “But I have a new relationship with God. I tend to be much more blunt with him.”
I found it moving that Roger’s experience of war drove him to want to continue to serve others in a tangible way, despite the personal suffering this service caused him.
How has increasing experience/knowledge of dark reality, in the Iraq war or elsewhere, driven you toward or away from compassion/service for others? toward or away from faith/God?
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Comment by: Rachel
1 05/16/07 8:35 AM | Comment Link |I believe that the faith that they are losing is what Brian McLaren calls “American Civil Religion - a consumerist, militarist, therapeutic, colonial, nationalist chaplaincy that baptizes and blesses whatever the richest and most powerful nation on the planet wants to do.”
I just wonder if they will replace it with faith in the Jesus who suffers with us or if they will lose their belief in God altogether.
Comment by: trissa
2 05/16/07 6:51 PM | Comment Link |Good point Rachel. Although, I think it probably would be very hard to maintain faith when seeing so much death and destruction. As a social worker (not even in the same relm as a soldier) I have seen many things that make me very much doubt the existance of God.
Comment by: benjamin ady
3 05/17/07 9:27 AM | Comment Link |Rachel–thanks for the McLaren quote. I got to refer to it last night in a discussion at Alpha. “Civic” is an interesting term around which it is difficult to wrap one’s mind. I mean it comes along with the baggage of related words like “civilized” or “civilization”. It’s kind of a way to do with one word exactly what Brian is talking about.
Somehow a suffering god is so much more approachable than a victorious god.
Comment by: benjamin ady
4 05/17/07 9:35 AM | Comment Link |Trissa
So are you saying you now *don’t* buy (intellecutally, emotionally?) the existence of god? does a suffering god seem more … possible to you than an “omniscient, all powerful” god? I’m doing abnormal psychology this quarter at university, so I’m guessing I’m getting exposed, at an academic level, to some of the same types of things that you perhaps see and deal with at an experiental level in your work as a social worker? I’ve found it quite disturbing, but as the quarter winds down I’ve found it makes me want even more to somehow be of use to these people who suffer so much. I guess that’s why I connected with Roger’s story–he seems to have experienced the same kind of thing. Is it perhaps more important or more real that people like you and I and Roger are driven to help others by our experience of their suffering than it is what our thoughts or feelings or experiences of “god” are? Or do you think our “religion/faith etc.” are core to how we approach the suffering in the world, or vice versa?
Hope that’s not too many too vague questions.
Comment by: Staci
5 05/17/07 10:52 AM | Comment Link |I think the experience of suffering driving us to help others is reflective of the image of God in our lives.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
6 05/17/07 10:57 PM | Comment Link |Staci,
… so does that mean that that people who just write off others’ suffering, or blame them, reflect the image of an altogether different god?
That is, are you saying that people’s *actions* constitute a reflection of their god?
Comment by: Rachel
7 05/19/07 6:43 PM | Comment Link |Money? Power? Violence? Security? America?
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
8 05/19/07 10:29 PM | Comment Link |Rachel,
indeed. There is a certain fairy tailish idea that gods derive power from the number and fervor of the people who worship them. This makes a certain sense to me.
Isn’t security such a huge and winsome illusion? god the horrors we spin off in our pursuit of it.
Comment by: Rachel
9 05/20/07 7:49 PM | Comment Link |As Shane Claiborne says, “We have placed such idolatrous faith in our ability to protect ourselves that we call it more courageous to die killing than to die loving.”
Comment by: trissa
10 05/22/07 11:28 PM | Comment Link |Rachel said:
I guess what I was trying to say is that most of us who are in a serving perfession got there because of idealism. A soldiers idealism is patriotism or wanting to spread freedom (I’m somewhat assuming, somewhat going on what I know from my brother who is in the Airforce). A social worker’s ideal is to help people who are less fortunete. A teacher wants to open their students up the oppourtunities around them (my mom and sister are teachers). So we run on idealism, but it only gets us so far. A soldier sees death, pain, suffering and sees no positive outcomes. A social worker sees one client after another who’s unwilling to change their life circumstances. The teacher has to deal with unmotivated students and absent parents. Slowly the idealism erodes and one day your ideals seem far away and nieve. I think as one sees suffering and pain without relief it’s hard to believe in anything.
So often people in my profession push it aside and don’t think about how what they see affects them. I assume it’s the same as a soldier. If you think about it you might find the last of your idealism slip away and the foundation that once brought about all decisions is gone.
I personally don’t believe in god at the moment, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with my job (but maybe it does and I don’t want to think about it). I have become so much more “shades of gray” because, like all people in my profession, I’ve had to. It’s the only way we survive. Shades of gray doesn’t always mesh well with idealism, altruism and belief.
I read this blog and other Christian blogs because it keeps me connected to humanity in a small way. I live for those moments when I feel something good, when I can feel a positive connection with humanity.
I know I probably sound dramatic, but after three years I’ve finally started to really think about what my profession has done to my body and soul. Often I don’t feel refreshed so I hang onto those rare moments when I can.
Last night I was driving home from a Portland hospital where I left a mom whose baby was just diagnosed with Shaken Baby Syndrome. Fortunetly its a mild case, however everybody becomes a suspect, including mom. I had to tell her that she could not be alone with her daughter until we could polygraph her. When I left the room she and her mother were crying. I saw her crying and felt little. As I rode home I was numb until a story came on NPR’s Fresh Air about a priest in LA who helps gang members find jobs. He related a story about four rival gang members who had met through his program. At some point they became friends and one year spent Christmas together because none of them had anywhere else to go. I started to cry and then rejoiced because I felt something. I felt reconnected with humanity in a positive way.
Comment by: Justice and Compassion
11 05/24/07 2:54 AM | Comment Link |[...] posted some really insightful thoughts as part of the ongoing conversation in another thread. I wanted to repost them at the start of a new thread I guess what I was trying to say is that most [...]
Comment by: Benjamin
12 05/27/07 12:07 AM | Comment Link |thanks for the great comments all. I’ve reposted Trissa’s thoughts at the top of a new thread