{"id":37127,"date":"2024-04-02T17:31:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T00:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37127"},"modified":"2024-04-02T17:31:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T00:31:46","slug":"a-pathway-leading-to-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-pathway-leading-to-healing\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pathway Leading to Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past week has been so peaceful and filled with so many joyful interactions. I love Holy Week; it is my favorite time of the year with Thanksgiving being a close second. I welcomed the week off from class, readings, and posts as I desperately needed the week to not be on a schedule. I have been struggling to keep pace with all the things that I am balancing. Last week felt like a recharge for me and Resurrection Sunday was the absolute best way to round it off. I reluctantly picked up The Good Kill<\/em> Sunday afternoon and read it with more ease than I had anticipated. Honestly, the title had me a little concerned. Reading a book about killing, war, and the aftermath was not high on my list of things to do. What I discovered was that The Good Kill<\/em> offered a lot more insight for me than I had anticipated. Mark LiVecche presents a critical perspective of the morality of war, killings, and moral injury that it causes.<\/p>\n

I had a perspective of war and the aftermath based on what I have witnessed from veterans in my family. It was different for each person. All six of my Daddy\u2019s brothers served and two never really acclimated upon their return and struggled with various vices. Both of my grandfathers served and although I cannot say for sure what effect it had on them, I know that they were hardened by the experience. My father-in-law served in Vietnam and suffered from PTSD throughout his life. What was common for all of them is that they did not talk about what they did, what they saw, and who they lost during combat. And it was understood that it was improper to ask. The conversations about their service were limited to the branch that they served in, the years of service, and the bases to which they were assigned. My father-in-law would often complain about the VA and the ridiculous wait times, but he did not talk about his years of service. I have also heard the Veterans in my family speak about the irony of fighting for a country alongside soldiers that treated them with disrespect because of the color of their skin. It always made me sad to think about what they experienced. LiVecche says, \u201cThose who fight wars are intimate with the sight of smashed faces and the pulped stumps of blown-apart limbs.\u201d[1]<\/a>I knew that what they experienced was horrific in many ways, yet I never thought about the moral injury that they may have experienced. It honestly never crossed my mind. This book allowed me to look beyond my experiences and consider a new perspective.<\/p>\n

LiVecche introduces the moral injury in a Christian context. \u201cMany veterans are unable to reconcile such actions in war with the biblical commandment \u201cThou shalt not kill.\u201d When they come home from an environment where killing is not only accepted but is a metric of success, the transition to one where killing is wrong can be incomprehensible.\u201d[2]<\/a> The difficulty of balancing what is a biblical mandate and what is expected of you to defend your country is a complicated reality that presents a moral and biblical challenge. Likewise, the commandment \u201cLove Thy Neighbor\u201d is also confronted as a moral issue in the act of war. The opponent is seen as an enemy and not a neighbor. As LiVecche states, \u201cThe image of the enemy-neighbor means that we never rejoice in getting to kill, but lament in having to.\u201d[3]<\/a> Our neighbors in the broader sense our citizens of the world who may not look like us or worship the way that we do. There is a reasonable assumption that they do not a have shared belief system. Yet the differences do not negate that they are our neighbors and doing harm takes its toll.<\/p>\n

It is interesting that with each book that we have read, I have been able to find an area of growth in my own personal life. I have never thought of the moral injury that taking a life inflicts. I have pondered, prayed, and lamented over the senseless killings that happen in this country. I have spent a great deal of time praying as it is my preferred battlefield. Yet I have not once considered the people pulling the trigger are experiencing a moral injury or a moral bruise. I had not considered that doing something that is against a deeply held belief would possibly leave wounds. LiVecche says, \u201cif moral injury comes from doing something that goes against a deeply held moral norm, then a moral bruise is what comes out of the shame of doing poorly what is morally permissible.\u201d[4]<\/a> I closed this book with a new understand of how we are all changed, bruised, injured by killings, by loss of life, by inflicted mortal injury. It changes us all in ways that we are often unable to reconcile. It changes the soldier, the police officer, the abuser, the abused, the innocent, the guilty, the clergy, the loved ones. None of us are immune to the pain and we all bear the responsibility to walk the pathway towards healing. The Psalmist reminds us, \u201cHe heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds\u201d[5<\/a>] Loved\u00a0Ones, God provides respite and healing, we have to be committed to doing the work.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Marc LiVecche, The Good Kill: Just War and Moral Injury<\/em> (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021), 18.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 31.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 177.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 201.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Psalms 147:3 (ESV)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past week has been so peaceful and filled with so many joyful interactions. I love Holy Week; it is my favorite time of the year with Thanksgiving being a close second. I welcomed the week off from class, readings, and posts as I desperately needed the week to not be on a schedule. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2489,3098],"class_list":["post-37127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-livecche","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37128,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37127\/revisions\/37128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}