Moral Injury

Blogpost #3

by Bryan Brown | Mary Pauline Diaz-Frasene | Joshua Montoya | Brian Garrison | Kyle Petricek | CJ Rithner

“Facile forgiveness interferes with veterans facing the truth of what they did. It may offer anesthesia for the pain of moral injury, but premature forgiveness can create an addiction to relief , and it can reinforce a need to tell horror stories, enact guilt, and solicit forgiveness.” — Rita Nakashima Brock

Moral injury is a fracturing of conscience. It is a kind of spiritual trauma that takes the form of an unspeakable guilt that dislocates the identity of the sufferer. Those who live with moral injury are the result of having been put into an impossible moral situation by flawed institutions and a broken world. These unfair situations are not solely the fault of those who were forced to break their own souls, though we often want to justify actions and explain guilt away in order to be absolved; rather than providing healing, it only creates all too familiar cycles of anesthetizing addiction.

We perhaps see this compulsion to prematurely relieve the burdened conscience represented best in our religion — In a culture that refuses to acknowledge harm, and has become adept at bypassing shame, many of us have grown up with a Christianity that was little more than a way to short circuit guilt and trauma: a disbursement of forgiveness distributed daily to addicted souls caught up in cycles of repetition. This may be cathartic and offer emotional relief, but receiving such forgiveness requires amnesia about the full extent of the harm that war and other such atrocities truly inflict. It functions precisely the same way as self-medication. Forgiveness has to follow acknowledgment of harm, it cant be accessed if the guilt and shame are bypassed. When a bypass masquerades as forgiveness it actually obstructs true forgiveness from taking place.

“Without the ability to remember what violated moral conscience, moral identity cannot be rebuilt, either in an individual or in a society that refuses its own responsibility for war.”¹

The ability to accept reality is vital in maintaining mental and emotional health. This does not imply that reality, as it is, is desirable or good; rather change, progress, healing and the reshaping of reality into something new begins with what is. Veterans, after having crossed personal, social, cultural, and sometimes religious or moral boundaries are left with payment and the baggage of what they have done. Making peace with their actions and with their bodies that committed these actions is paramount for survival and a seemingly impossible task.

Examining the Biblical text through a psychological lens offers unique perspectives on the process of restoring Biblical combat veterans to the societies from whence they came. There are three practices within the biblical text that have a redemptive effect, cleansing rituals, community engagement, and creative expression.² The reality of being made unclean was embraced by the community and provision for cleansing and restoration were practiced in the community, providing for the soldiers a path to restoration, as referenced in Numbers 31. David, the infamous psalmist, prophet, king, and soldier danced, wrote poetry, played music, acknowledged the reality of his moral injury, sought forgiveness, and remained within his community.³ David embodied the process of embracing the reality of his wounded humanity not by hiding but rather expressing himself, owning his mistakes and receiving the provision of the community.

“In accepting our moral responsibility for the many devastations of war, we may begin an honest reassessment and renewal of our relationship to our own humanity, to each other, the rest of the world and to all that sustains life.”

Endnotes:

1. Rita Nakishima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, Soul Repair: Recovering From Moral Injury After War (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012 ), 103.
2. Jan Grimell, “Contemporary Insights from Biblical Combat Veterans through the Lenses of Moral Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” The Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling 72 (4) 2018: 246 & 249.
3. Ibid,. 247.

Bibliography

Grimell, Jan. “Contemporary Insights from Biblical Combat Veterans through the Lenses of Moral Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” The Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling 72 (4) 2018: 241–50.

Nakashima Brock, Rita, and Gabriella Lettini. Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012.