God: The Healer
“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall be as wool.” Isaiah 1:18.
Introduction
Notice what the LORD is saying in this verse. Almighty God
is inviting us to reason with Him. He
is inviting us to confess our sins to Him and have Him forgive us for them.
However, more importantly, God is saying that He will forgive you your
wrongdoings! Like removing our backpacks after a long foot-blistering hike we
are to unburden ourselves of our load of sins. As we hand over our sins to God
He takes away our guilt and our shame. This in turn results in us no longer
having to struggle with a guilty conscience! Thus we move from Moral Injury to
Moral Repair.
A
Reasonable Faith
It stands to reason that if God wants us to reason with Him
then first we must believe, (i.e., have faith) that He exists. The writer to
the Hebrews says, “But without faith it is
impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He
is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Hebrews
11:6. Think about it, the reward for diligently seeking God (among other things) is peace of mind,
i.e., the removal of a guilty conscience.
Some people have actually said to me, “I wish I had your faith.” Well, according to the
Bible every human being believes in God. We simply suppress that knowledge
through our own wickedness. To say that we know God is simply another way of
saying that everyone begins with the presupposition that God exists. Each of us
inherently knows that God exists because God has built it into our being. We
are made in His own image and likeness. From here it is simply a matter of what
people do with that congenital presupposition that results on whether they will
end up with a clear conscience or not.
Almighty God your Maker is inviting you to reason with Him.
However, it stands to reason that you would not be reasoning together with God
if He is absent from the conversation or dialogue, absent from your thoughts.
Strange as it may seem, this is the way that some people treat God, as if He is
simply a mathematical abstraction or philosophical equation and not the personal Triune God who created us in
His own image and likeness. It is because God is a Person, (actually God is three Persons, i.e., the Father, the Son
or Word, and the Holy Spirit, Matthew 28:19), that we are able to have a personal conversation with Him.
Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through Me” John 14:6. We speak to the Father in the power of the Spirit through the Son and God speaks to us by His Spirit with His Word. In other words, we pray to Him and He replies to us through His Word, the Bible.
Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through Me” John 14:6. We speak to the Father in the power of the Spirit through the Son and God speaks to us by His Spirit with His Word. In other words, we pray to Him and He replies to us through His Word, the Bible.
But again, notice that we are not speaking into the void. We
are not calling out in an empty building, “Is there anyone there?” God is! And
He is everywhere at once. We are to reason with God, the God who is there!
Think about it, if you do not believe that God exists then why would your
conscience be troubling you? Why do I ask this? Well, your conscience is part,
a big part, of one of the ways that God is using to make His existence known to
you. This has to do with you being made in His image. As a mirror would not
reflect your image unless you existed, so you and I would not be the image and
likeness of God if He did not exist! However, God through His Word, the Bible,
says that we are His likeness. “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father,
and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.” James 3:9.
Like a “Hall of Mirrors” our own sin distorts us individually as the image of
God. Therefore, none of us (apart from Jesus) gives His true reflection.
A
Reflecting Faith
Wrestling with one’s
own conscience (a prominent symptom of Moral Injury) is a first step on the
road towards reasoning with God! Feelings of guilt come about when one has
failed or is failing to measure up to one’s own idea of moral good. The
conscience is the measuring stick whereby we determine how far we are short of
the mark. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans
3:23.
Let us once again reflect on what Richard Sibbes said: “The conscience is the soul reflecting upon
itself.” Note the difference between the soul reflecting upon itself and wrestling
with one’s own conscience. Whereas the former is you reasoning with yourself,
the latter is you arguing with yourself! Isn’t it better simply to examine your
own reflection that to attack it like some angry bird attacking its reflection
in a window pane?
Here’s the rub: Healing begins for the
individual when he or she recognizes that Moral Injury, like its sibling PTSD, is
a spiritual problem. Now it becomes easier
to see one of the reasons why Western psychiatry and psychology are having so
much trouble healing people suffering from the symptoms of PTSD and Moral
Injury. These systems are based on an Atheistic premise which denies the
existence of soul and/or spirit as commonly taught in the Bible and
Christianity. The Bible says, “But the natural man does
not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him;
nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 1
Corinthians 2:14. The bottom line is that spiritual things (including spiritual
problems such as PTSD and Moral Injury) are spiritually discerned.
Now, this is not to say that modern psychiatrist and psychologists can
offer no help to their patients. However, like any other science that detaches
itself from God and His Biblical revelation, they are missing the key component
of what they are dealing with, which is God and that which is His image, i.e.,
human beings.
One discerning doctor I was talking to about PTSD said, “You know? PTSD
is so hard to fix because we’re dealing with something invisible!” Think about
it, we only know that a person suffering from PTSD or Moral Injury by way of
revelation. If that sounds too Biblical then let me state it in another way. We
only know that PTSD and Moral Injury exist because someone has told us about
them. We cannot see, hear, taste, smell or touch PTSD and Moral Injury. They remain invisible until someone reveals
them to us.
If this is beginning to sound a bit like
gobbledegook to you then I would suggest that it is because Western Science has
had some success in trying to extricate itself from the science of Theology.
This is what I mean by Atheistic science. It follows a Materialist philosophy
and it ignores and even denies that which is spiritual. Therefore, the road to
recovery for those suffering PTSD and Moral Injury (and Western Science
itself!) is a return to the inclusion of Theology in scientific discussion instead
of its present ostracism.
“God is Spirit.” John 4:24. And a human being
is a soul-spirit with a body. (2 Thessalonians 5:23). God is invisible
(Colossians 1:15) and so is the spirit and the soul of a human being. God is
the Father and the Son/Word and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). “The Word
became flesh” John 1:14, which is to say that Jesus is God and also is a
soul-spirit with a body, i.e., a human being like us. How do we know that Jesus
is God? The same way we know that someone has PTSD or Moral Injury. Revelation!
Because PTSD and Moral Injury are spiritual
we are only offering band-aid solutions until we acknowledge the “Father of
spirits” (Hebrews 12:9) and ask Him to intervene and heal us. Spiritual healing
is the healing of our spirit by God’s Spirit. Once healed, as the writer to the
Hebrews says, “Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and
desire to live honourably in every way” Hebrews 13:18.
Conclusion
The first step toward being healed of your
PTSD and/or Moral Injury is to acknowledge that as a human being you are
God’s moral agent by His creation, and as such you have broken His Moral law
and need to seek and to receive His forgiveness.
The second step is to acknowledge that God
has made you like Him, i.e., triune in Nature.
You are body and soul and spirit, i.e., a soul-spirit with a body, and as such
and with God’s enabling are able to dialogue (i.e., reason with Him).
The third step is to acknowledge that you, like the rest of humanity, as a human being
are fallen in nature. There already is something morally wrong with you from
conception and birth. This is discovered with the first pang of conscience!
The fourth step is to
acknowledge that your accusing conscience is revelation of that which is
spiritual, i.e., God and the human soul and spirit. It lets us know that
something is wrong with you and that you need God the Spirit’s help and
healing.
The fifth and final step
is to acknowledge that God alone can fully heal us.
(Excerpted from my e-book Moral Injury: Towards a Theology in US at) - http://www.amazon.com/MORAL-INJURY-Neil-Cullan-McKinlay-ebook/dp/B00VFBJ72A/ref=la_B006NTVAWY_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427788714&sr=1-22
In UK at - http://www.amazon.co.uk/MORAL-INJURY-Neil-Cullan-McKinlay-ebook/dp/B00VFBJ72A/ref=la_B006NTVAWY_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427788869&sr=1-22
(Excerpted from my e-book Moral Injury: Towards a Theology in US at) - http://www.amazon.com/MORAL-INJURY-Neil-Cullan-McKinlay-ebook/dp/B00VFBJ72A/ref=la_B006NTVAWY_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427788714&sr=1-22
In UK at - http://www.amazon.co.uk/MORAL-INJURY-Neil-Cullan-McKinlay-ebook/dp/B00VFBJ72A/ref=la_B006NTVAWY_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427788869&sr=1-22
