Moral Injury and the Power of Forgiveness
“Chaps, I’m really struggling. You see, recently I _____, which is something I never thought I would do. I have tried my whole life to be a good person, a person of integrity. But now I realize I’m nothing like I’ve wanted to be.”
I recently had the above conversation with one of my military service members, who felt deep shame and intense self-loathing over something they had done.
Throughout my time in ministry and in chaplaincy, I have had that conversation with numerous people of all backgrounds. While each situation is unique in its details, the result is the same: the individual feels deep remorse and shame from not matching the spiritual standards or moral characteristics that they hold in highest regard.
After becoming a military chaplain, I grew interested in the idea of moral injury.
Moral injury is the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct. Within the context of military service, particularly regarding the experience of war, “moral injury” refers to the lasting emotional, psychological, social, behavioral, and spiritual impacts of actions that violate a service member’s core moral values and behavioral expectations of self or others. [1]
From a military perspective, this could include such actions as giving orders that lead to the death of fellow service member(s), following the rules of engagement in ways that lead to the death of civilians, failing to act against a witnessed atrocity, or helping efforts progress only to see them undone by opposing forces after you leave. [2]
But I also encounter these injuries in my civilian ministry. Individuals who believe their sin completely defines their lives, who carry intense shame over events that have happened to them, who didn’t act against violence or offense that happened to themselves or another, who stayed silent in the face of injustice, and who believe that God can forgive others but would never forgive someone like them. They, too, carry around a sense of moral injury and spiritual distress.
There is discussion about whether the better terminology is moral injury or spiritual injury. [3] In the military, however, we talk about spirituality not only in terms of belief in a deity, but as a belief in something higher than yourself that helps you make meaning. Values, core beliefs, morals, transcendence, beauty, and religion all come into play into this perspective. When a person (re)acts in a way that goes against their core beliefs or values, they experience a form of stress that comes from the dissonance between who they are and who they believe they ought to be.
I want us to stop for a moment and consider people in Scripture who experience moral distress and injury:
Abraham, who feels torn between his faith and his fatherhood.
Moses, who kills a man and tries to hide it, only to flee when he’s found out. He subsequently sits in the desert for 40 years out of fear.
Jonathan, who cannot fully protect his friend from his father’s wrath.
David, who uses another man’s wife and then has the man killed as part of the coverup. It’s not until Nathan calls him out that he realizes how far he has fallen.
The disciples, who promise to stand by Jesus but don’t.
Paul, who continually mentions his prior persecution of Christians and calls himself the “chief of sinners.”
On and on the list goes of people who “fall short” of their calling.
Yet the Bible also reminds us that God is there in the midst of our distress. Think of the metaphors used: God is our rock, fortress, deliverer, ever-present help in times of trouble. We find shelter under God’s wings. He hides us in the cleft of the rock, meets us in our deepest need, and is close to the brokenhearted. He removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west, as high as the heavens are above the earth. And nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Through my next few articles, I want to delve into moral and spiritual injury, looking at ways that we as Christians, ministers, pastors, counselors, and chaplains can respond when we encounter cases of moral injury. But today I want us to focus on moral injury through the beginning of Ps. 130:
Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
We find a psalmist who knows the depth of their own brokenness. They’ve fallen far short of the vision they had for themselves. Yet we also find them bringing this brokenness before God. And we hear a reminder of truth that overcomes our deficit:
But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.
One practice that is helpful for those who are going through moral injury is to say out loud where they “fell short” of the actions or the character to which they aspire. This is a form of lament for actions committed or omitted. It allows us to name our shortcomings (to confess our sins) so that we can begin to hear the forgiveness God offers.
As we journey through moral and spiritual injury, I want to challenge you to look at Scriptures through this lens. It can serve as an interesting hermeneutic to examine motivations and meanings, but it can also help us bring these Scriptures to bear in the lives of those struggling with sin, self-contempt, and shame.
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[1] https://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/about-moral-injury/
[2] Many symptoms overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the two diagnoses are separate from one another. They are often overlapping, however; many who have PTSD are also dealing with moral injury, and vice versa.
[3] This article on the “Spiritual Dimensions of Moral Injury” provides a quick summary.
