Chaplains: Fort Hood traumatized us, too

The question chaplains get most is "Why did God let this happen?" just as you will read later in the posted article regarding Fort Hood and the aftermath. It has been more helpful to answer this question with another question. "What would you have had God do?" Usually this leads to having God stop it but they can't think of how or when it's supposed to be stopped. When does it stop? Before this one is hurt or killed or after that one? Can you justify someone living thru it instead of another person? Were they less worthy? No they were not and they were loved just as much. God didn't decide to put the guns in Major Hasan's hands. Hasan did. God does not force anyone to do anything but He does ask us, guides us, opens our eyes and our hearts so that we do not turn into people like Hasan, able to kill others for no reason other than he could.

There are many times when people say "God only gives us what we can handle." which is the most perplexing statement I have ever heard in my life. Is it they think a loving God sends them pain and suffering, heartache and misery? Why would He do such a thing? It is not that He sends what is bad but He sends the good surrounding us to help us through it. In times of crisis, there is goodness and compassion surrounding those who suffer. When they act out of care for someone else, God is there. When they act out of bravery to save someone else, God is there. The very fact humans can survive something that seems straight out of hell and still care about someone else proves God is there.

People either do things to others or for them. Do we blame God when they do bad things to us? Do we thank God every time someone comes to help us? Do we ever wonder who God could see us there in need just as we wonder where He was when evil unleashed a wrath upon us? The very fact that all that is from our better angels lives on after traumatic events indicates the love that God has for us and that He sent it to live within each of us because it was good. Some people just decide to kill off what is good inside of them, block out cries for help, ignore the calling of their souls to think of others and seek to take what is not their's to have. They become bitter and angry and live off hurting others. These people did not change like this on orders from God but from the selfishness of our ego.

Better angels were more in number that day at Fort Hood than the worst mankind had to offer. The soldiers who helped the wounded, the police officers responding and then the entire base caring about everyone else there, leaning on each other like family and the prayers of an entire nation with them in the days that followed. Just as funerals are still going on and communities line the street to honor the fallen's return and prayers go out for the wounded. These are our better angels and considering how much we outnumber the bad, it's easy to see that God did not allow any of it but most likely grieved as He had to watch too.

Chaplains: Fort Hood traumatized us, too

By Rick Jervis - USA Today
Posted : Monday Nov 16, 2009 15:23:53 EST

FORT HOOD, Texas — They were supposed to be spending a day leading Mass, talking to soldiers about love and marriage, readying for their own deployment. Instead, the military chaplains of Fort Hood found themselves on the afternoon of Nov. 5 scrambling to the front lines of the worst shooting massacre on a military base in U.S. history.

Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded. Authorities charged Maj. Nidal Hasan with murder.

As some of the first to arrive on the chaotic scene that day, the chaplains counseled dazed, injured soldiers, comforted witnesses and prayed over the bullet-ridden bodies of the slain.

Now they are being asked to lead the healing process. The pace and success at which they counsel the wounded and their families will determine how quickly the post returns to normalcy, said Ralph Gauer, past president of the local chapter of the Association of the United States Army, a group that counsels military families through tragedy.

“Chaplains right now represent the glue that holds an awful lot of units together,” Gauer said. “But they have to come to grip(s) with it themselves. They have to try to understand what they saw themselves as they explain it others.”

There are 75 chaplains at Fort Hood, most of them assigned to units, said Lt. Col. Keith Goode, deputy 3rd Corps chaplain. Ten more chaplains have been flown into Fort Hood, including an imam and a rabbi, to help with the counseling.
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/ap_hood_chaplains_111609/