Posts Tagged ‘PTSD’

Jesus and PTSD

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 by JEL

Command Chaplain Col. Donald W. Holdridge of the 200th Military Police Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, the Army Reserves top chaplain for MPs, believes faith in Jesus can cure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He wrote an 11,000-word essay, “Spiritual Resiliency: Helping Troops Recover from Combat.” In it he says:

“Combat vets need to know that most of these [PTSD symptoms] do fade in time, like scars. They will always be there to some degree, but their intensity will fade. What will help them fade is the application of the principles of Scripture.”

He then goes on to list some resources to help combat vets with PTSD. Four out of 10 are evangelical organizations whose mission, at least to some degree, is evangelizing to members of the military. Not everyone shares Holdridge’s views. Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, responded with:

“This is a carefully calculated, base, evil, vile, filthy and despicable perversion of the United States Constitution which, at once, heinously divides and demoralizes military unit cohesion while concomitantly lubricating and accelerating soldier suicides.”

Whether you think the chaplain is on the right track or obliterating the boundary between Church and State, you can learn more here.