Military

They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially... - Jeremiah 8:11a

E-mail has been low in my priorities recently, so I didn't read this or post it on Veteran's Day. But it's worth posting now. The writer, Jeff Ewer, is an elder of Clearnote Church, Bloomington who served in our Armed Forces when he was a younger man. His comments here on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are helpful and they apply to a host of issues where we neglect the soul and the Law of God and thereby fail to comfort the afflicted. And I say "we" because this failure is as common in the Reformed church as it is among other Christians. Warren Kinghorn, the writer of the USA Today article Jeff links to, ends his piece: 

Veterans need a civilian culture that refuses to distance itself from them either through reflexive condemnation or, more commonly, through reflexive valorization. Sometimes, they need communities that can offer the non-medical languages of confession, repentance and forgiveness. And above all, they need to be taken seriously as moral beings who have stood for us in hazy and complicated places and who now bear witness to what that commitment entails.

In the Reformed church, it's usually "reflexive valorization;" I know that's a good characterization of my own care for these men. We must do better, providing them care that applies the Word of God to their killing and probes and welcomes their confessions of sin.

This article is also most helpful in our work exposing and ending child molestation and incest.

My wife and I spent most of the past week out of state working with the elders and pastor of a PCA congregation dealing with sins of incest in a large homeschooling family. Much like war, the horror of incest conspires to silence the application of God's Word to the sinners and victims...

Reproduced below is the Majority Report of the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military. The 30th (2002) General Assembly received the report with thanks, adopted its recommendations, and the work of the committee (including this final report) may be accessed here in the PCA's archives.

On this day when our Commander in Chief has repudiated God's Order of Creation by declaring women will no longer be protected from combat in our Armed Forces, I commend this document to our readers. If biblical Christians today studied and embraced Scripture's doctrine of Creation Order sexuality, it would be a significant step toward the restoration of the unity of the Church and these United States might again have a bright light in their midst. (TB)

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MAN’S DUTY TO PROTECT WOMAN

We, the undersigned, endorse the Consensus Report, while realizing that Report lacks unity on the crucial matter of whether the recommendations it contains constitute the church’s wise counsel or a Christian’s scriptural duty. Believing that this is a matter of scriptural duty, we have joined together in writing this report to the end that we might set forth with confidence and clarity the full counsel—both New and Old Testaments—of the Word of God concerning this matter. Our report attempts to summarize three areas of evidence, as follows:

First, God the Father wages war in defense of Israel, His Bride; Christ our Savior fights to the Death defending His Bride, the Church; the Holy Spirit calls men as officers to guard and protect His Bride; the duty to protect the Garden of Eden and the warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given by God to Adam; husbands protect their wives, not wives their husbands. Thus we are taught the binding nature of man’s duty to guard and protect his home and wife.

Second, woman is the weaker sex and part of her weakness is the vulnerability attendant to her greatest privilege—that God has made her the “Mother of all the living.” Men are to guard and protect her as she carries in her womb, gives birth to, and nurses her children.

Third, we are to renounce every thought and action which tends towards a diminishment of sexual differentiation since God made it and called it “good.” [E.g. Scripture’s injunctions concerning women exercising authority over men (1 Timothy 2), women or men wearing clothing of the opposite sex (Deuteronomy 22:5), sodomy (Leviticus 20:15-16), etc.] Rather than a stingy attitude which minimizes sexuality’s implications, we ought to rejoice in this, His blessing.

It is our conviction that these areas, taken together, provide a clear and compelling scriptural rationale for declaring our church’s principled opposition to women serving in military combat positions.

When a man loves a woman, he will lay down his life to defend her, just as Christ loved His Bride and gave Himself up for Her. Men have proudly fulfilled this duty from time immemorial...