The 'Easy' Cure for PTSD? The Cruelty of Shallow Religious Answers

The 'Easy' Cure for PTSD? The Cruelty of Shallow Religious Answers
Huffington Post
Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph. D.
Director, The Soul Repair Center
Posted: 11/22/2013

Got PTSD? If you have enough faith, if you truly believe, televangelist Kenneth Copeland asserts you can get over it, right now! The Bible tells you so.

In an interview broadcast on Veterans Day, Copeland asserted that the biblical God assures the Israelites preparing for battle that they will be "guiltless before the Lord and before the nation" (Numbers 32:22). Copeland insisted, "Any of you suffering from PTSD... [you] get rid of that right now.

You don't take drugs to get rid of it. It doesn't take psychology. That promise right there will get rid of it." Evangelical David Barton chimed in, saying, "You're on an elevated platform up here. You're a hero... When you do it God's way, not only are you guiltless for having [participated in war]... you're esteemed."

So... are you feeling better yet? No? You're not the only one.

When Bill Gibson, a VA psychologist, related the Copeland-Barton interview to members of a combat PTSD group he facilitates, he received stunned silence. Finally, one Iraqi war vet said, "I wish it was that easy -- do people think I want to feel this way?" And a Vietnam War veteran added, "The only person who would say something like that is someone who has never been in the kinds of situations we've been in."

Barton and Copeland insult all veterans with PTSD. PTSD is not the result of a "faith deficit disorder," as Allen Clark asserts on his website CombatFaith.com. PTSD is real, and it is in the brain.

Almost 4,000 years ago, Egyptian writers described PTSD symptoms, and in Achilles in Vietnam, psychiatrist Jonathan Shay finds in Homer's Iliad a profound understanding of PTSD symptoms -- and the toll they exact from its sufferers.
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I was furious when I read about what these people had to say. OMG! Preachers blame veterans for PTSD on Veterans' Day

20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. Joshua 6

but that was just a small part of what Sunday School songs leave out when talking about the battle of Jericho. They slaughtered everyone in Jericho. Old men, women and children. That was what war was like back then and for Joshua, there were many, many more. It was not until the Psalms of David that it became clear the price these ancient war fighters paid.

They were in war all the time. Few soldiers escaped the retirement of the grave.

The people spouting off about lack of faith having anything to do with PTSD are false preachers that Chris warned about. The fact they grieve so much is testament to the magnificence of their soul.

To survive the worst humans can do and still be able to shed a tear, reach out a hand to comfort anyone is beyond reason. To grieve so much that they end up with PTSD proves God was there with them all the time. If they see the wonder of their souls/spirits and the power they have within them to love, to give so much of themselves that they were willing to die for someone else, they heal.

Leaders, or false preachers, push them away from the healing power already within them and that is the worst sin of all.

They had to train hard to stop being a civilian and they learned it well. Then no one got them to understand training to adapt afterwards was going to be a harder thing to train for. It takes work to heal and they can come out on the other side better than they were before but they are still trying to go back to the way they were before. They need to make peace with it and that, that is one of the hardest things for them to do.

So far too many are not finding what they need to heal and it is all right there inside of them just as PTSD is but they need help to get it reconnected again.