Page Range
202-216
Keywords
Combat Stress, Theodicy, Veterans, Religious Doubt, Community
Abstract
In the aftermath of intense kinetic battlefield engagements where friendly, civilian, and enemy casualties occur, Christian combat veterans express difficulty reconciling God’s omniscience, omnipresence, and benevolence with their traumatic experience. The result has been prolonged episodes of despondence with God that presents itself as an impediment to continued faith or worse, an outright rejection of His existence. Exposure to the horrors of armed conflict can have a profoundly detrimental effect on a service member’s faith, but a person can begin the process to heal the invisible wounds of spiritual trauma by not abandoning their faith in God but instead clinging to it and finding a resolution to their doubts through an exercise in theodicy; all within a community context with genuine and consistent confidants who serve as mainstays throughout the introspective process.
Recommended Citation
Baker, Donald Anthony. 2021. "Faith after the Fight: Overcoming Doubts and Trauma from Warfare." Eleutheria: John W. Rawlings School of Divinity Academic Journal 5, (2). https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/eleu/vol5/iss2/13