GN Commentary: May 13, 2009 - Unseen Wounds

Do you know the way to have the kind of peace that brings healing to the human mind and heart? God offers to show us how to live in a way that actually heals hearts and minds and produces lasting peace.

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Video Transcript

Virtually every community in our land has been traumatized by the haunting terribleness of the war raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Daily the stories of fallen American soldiers and the pain of their loved ones becomes fodder for the evening news.  The flag-draped caskets and somber honor guards and grieving families never get any easier to watch.

It's hard to comprehend how people a world away could be filled with such hatred for young American men and women they've never known, but Monday afternoon the insanity of war exploded in a different way at Camp Liberty on the west side of Baghdad.  In an area set aside to give counseling to those suffering from the unimaginable stresses of warfare, one soldier's fragile grip on reality snapped and he opened fire on his own comrades, killing five before attempting to end his own life.

We may never understand what terrifying thoughts seized him in those brief moments of violence, but one thing is sure—he isn't alone.  Of the troops who have cycled through the war zone, it is estimated that one in five, or as many as 300,000 have some form of mental or emotional difficulty as a result of their experiences.  The most painful wounds of war are not always those we can see.

I've always been grateful that I never experienced the horrors of combat, but as a child I watched my father—a strong and gentle man—lose his grip on reality as a result of his experiences in WWII.  In those days we had never heard of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder but those who lived with it had descended into a personal hell far worse than anything most have ever imagined.  While our hearts go out to the families of those killed in this tragedy, they also go out for this confused and frightened soldier who experienced situations God never intended a human being to experience.  We want all of them—the soldier who snapped, the families of his victims, and the hundreds of thousands of others who struggle with their own private nightmares—to have peace—not just the end of the current conflicts, but the kind of peace that brings healing to the human mind and heart.

Do you know the way to have that kind of peace?  According to Scripture, man doesn't know how to produce it.  But God offers to show us how to live in a way that actually heals hearts and minds and produces lasting peace.  The path to healing wasn't smooth for my father, but walking it brought him a level of peace he hadn't thought possible. If that sounds good to you, you need to begin learning the way of peace from the One who is called the Prince of peace.

For GN Magazine, I'm David Johnson.