Finding Jesus on Facebook, and Checking Podcasts for a Pew That Fits

Finding Jesus on Facebook, and Checking Podcasts for a Pew That Fits
By APRIL DEMBOSKY
Some churches are branching out into sites like Facebook and MySpace and weaving multimedia elements into their services in an effort to attract younger worshipers.
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How to talk to your doctor about God

How to talk to your doctor about God
Story Highlights
Recent study found many Americans believe in divine intervention in a medical crisis

If faith is important to you, it's OK to ask for a doctor with similar convictions

If you believe in miracles, make sure your health providers know it


By Elizabeth Cohen
CNN Medical Correspondent

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The doctors, nurses, pharmacists and technicians gathered around her son's crib, their faces grim. Pamela Gorman knew what they were thinking: Her son, Christopher, was about to die.

Christopher was just a few days old and had a rare blood infection and fungal meningitis, a brain infection.

"I could tell in their eyes they had no hope for my son," Gorman said. "They told me to prepare for his death. They told me he might not make it through the night."

Gorman never believed the doctors. In fact, she did something she thinks annoyed these men and women of science: She prayed. She prayed all the time.

"They made me feel ridiculous for praying so much and so hard and leaving it up to God," said Gorman, who lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho. "But I told them my son not surviving was not an option."

When he was a month old, Christopher left the hospital. He's been healthy ever since, she says. He turns 3 next month.

"It was a miracle," she said. "There are just things doctors can't explain. Doctors are not in control of everything. There's stuff that happens every day that they can't explain."

Empowered Patient: Watch more on faith and medicine »

A new study finds that many Americans have that same kind of faith. In the study, 57 percent of randomly surveyed adults said God's intervention could save a deathly ill family member even if physicians said treatment would be futile.

However, just under 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a helpless outcome.

The study was published last month in Archives of Surgery and is one of many to show a "faith gap" between doctors and patients.

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/09/11/ep.faith.medicine/index.html

Clergy learn together how to help vets

Clergy learn together how to help vets
By Anna Badkhen
Globe Staff / April 22, 2008
HADLEY - When a young veteran arrived at the Wesley United Methodist Church two years ago, the Rev. Lyle Seger barely noticed his presence. The church was moving to a new building, and Seger was preoccupied. The veteran attended a couple of Sunday services and then stopped coming.


Last February, the man returned to Seger's church to speak at a seminar about emotional needs of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and seeing his life shattered by his tour of duty in Afghanistan, the veteran had turned to alcohol, left his wife and two children, and considered killing himself.

"It was like getting a gut punch; it was eye-opening," said Seger, a pastor of 22 years who sees his calling in helping people. "What would have happened if we were more attentive to him?"

While private charities and government agencies have focused on ways to help returning vets dealing with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, or major depression, clergy have had little training. And with vets looking to churches for healing, ministers like Seger have not always known how to respond.

"They are not reaching out to them in a meaningful way that would help them heal from the war," said the Rev. Philip Salois, a Vietnam War veteran and chief of the chaplain service at the VA in Boston.

In Massachusetts, some members of the clergy are trying to find out.

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more stories like this on site
Humbled at Walter Reed
State to hold veterans fair in Hartford
State forms commission on veteran mental health care
Commission to study effects of war on Mass. veterans
Program targets veteran suicides

It's about time!!!!!

This is one of the biggest reasons why I did the new video PTSD Not God's Judgment. So many feel they were abandoned by God because they were where they were, doing what they had to do, seeing what they had to see and then wondering how a loving God could tolerate what happens during war. The point is that His heart must be breaking when it does happen but His wisdom knows the difference between evil and the willingness to lay down your life for the sake of your friends. He knows the warriors are willing to do that, but they pray to Him they never have to use their training. He knows our troops do not get to decide where they will risk their lives, how long they will risk their lives or which enemy they are told to kill.

The first warrior created by God was the Arch Angel Michael. He was created before man was even on the planet. God knew freewill would create chaos, right and wrong would be susceptible to pride, greed and those who seek to take power. Even the angels battled against each other. From the beginning of recorded time, man went to war with man, nation attacked nation because rulers wanted more and more of everything no matter who they had to kill to get it. Yet the warriors are the ones who only serve their country.

Every civilization, every generation had to address the aftermath of war for the survivors. Most adapted procedures to deal with the suffering of the warriors by taking care of their mind, body and spirit in healing. No matter which time they lived in or what faith they had, their leaders fed the three parts of the warriors. America has done little to address any of the three parts. The warriors of today are not given time for their bodies to rest, recover and rebuild strength. Their minds are not allowed to heal and they are forced to wait for the medical care they need. Their spirits are not addressed at all by the government or the clergy. The excuse is the separation of church and state.

This is where Chaplains come in. They are non-denominational pastors without a church, without a pulpit and without an agenda other than taking care of the spiritual needs of mankind. It should also be where the clergy come in but they are disinterested. I've talked to members of the clergy trying to get them to do this but as I was trying to explain it, I could see their eyes glaze over and then they would change the subject.

Most of this comes from the fact they are people who love God but have lived their lives in study of God and not in the study of man. They do not pay attention to the news or the events shaping their "flock" as they deal with things impossible for them to understand. The clergy have a had time understanding what the troops are going through just as they have a hard time understanding the anyone who comes to doubt God's love. They make speeches about forgiveness in their sermons but they never get to the heart when there are people sitting out there listening who have survived the ravages of war and then doubting the very same love of God they are hearing about from the pulpit.

Please read the rest of this article and then pass it on to your own clergy. Again, it does not matter what faith you are a member of. This is a human illness and a human need.



Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Veteran, theologian, and survivor of PTSD: "God gave me my identity back"

Veteran, theologian, and survivor of PTSD: "God gave me my identity back"
We hear a lot about returning war veterans broken in body, but less about those who are broken in mind and spirit. But here's the story of one veteran -- who is also a theologian and teacher -- who is working to see that those wounded warriors aren't forgotten:
John Zemler had nightmares. For 23 years, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, he awoke every night from the “screamers.”Then one morning in January 2007, he realized, the screamers were gone.
“A lot of my anger and fear, God just took it away from me,” Zemler said. “He gave me my identity back.” Zemler’s mission is to provide that same gift to other sufferers of PTSD.As an assistant professor of theology at Marquette University, with his wife Wanda Zemler-Cizewski, an associate professor, Zemler is in a unique position to provide outreach to those with PTSD — as a veteran, theologian, and victim.“I’m born into this job — theologian and as a veteran with PTSD,” Zemler said. “I’m called to it. You can get through this. A relationship with God will get you through it. It won’t defeat you.”A former artillery captain in the army, Zemler served in Desert Storm from the United States, training soldiers. The PTSD stems from the special weapons work he did in the 1980s in Turkey. From teaching others to fight, he now educates others about the dangers of PTSD.


Again put the spiritual and the psychological together to move the mountain of pain out of the way. This works best.

To lay down his life for the sake of his friends.

Do you think God abandoned you still? Come on and admit that while you were in the center of the trauma, you either felt the hand of God on your shoulder, or more often, never felt further from Him. In natural disasters, we pray to God to protect us. Yet when it's over we wonder why He didn't make the hurricane hit someplace else or why the tornadoes came and destroyed what we had while leaving the neighbors house untouched. We wonder why He heals some people while the people we love suffer. It is human nature to wonder, search for answers and try to understand.

In times of combat, it is very hard to feel anything Godly. Humans are trying to kill other humans and the horrors of wars become an evil act. The absence of God becomes overwhelming. We wonder how a loving God who blessed us with Jesus, would allow the carnage of war. We wonder how He could possibly forgive us for being a part of it. For soldiers, this is often the hardest personal crisis they face.

They are raised to love God and to be told how much God loves them. For Christians, they are reminded of the gift of Jesus, yet in moments of crisis they forget most of what Jesus went through.

Here are a few lessons and you don't even have to go to church to hear them.

( Matthew 8:5-13)
As he entered Caper'na-um, a centurion came forward to him, beseeching him and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress." And he said to him, "I will come and heal him." But the centurion answered him, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed him, "Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; be it done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed at that very moment.

This sounds like a great act Jesus did. You think about the Roman Centurion, powerful, commanding, able to lead men into combat, perhaps Jesus even knew of the other men this Centurion has killed. Yet this same man, capable of killing, was also capable of great compassion for what some regarded as a piece of property, his slave. He showed he didn't trust the pagan gods the Romans prayed to but was willing to trust Jesus.

Yet when you look deeper into this act, it proves that Jesus has compassion for the warriors. The life and death of Jesus were not surprises to Him. He knew from the very beginning how it would end. This is apparent throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. He knew He would be betrayed, beaten, mocked, humiliated and nailed to the cross by the hands of Romans. Yet even knowing this would come, He had compassion for this Roman soldier. The Romans had tortured and killed the Jews since the beginning of their empire as well as other conquered people. The Roman soldiers believed in what they were doing, yet even with that, there was still documentation of them suffering for what they did.

Ancient historians documented the illness striking the Greeks, which is what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There is evidence this illness hit every generation of warriors. Jesus would be aware that saving the Centurion's slave, because of the faith and trust He placed in Jesus, would be reported from soldier to soldier. Jesus showed compassion even to the Romans.

How can we think that He would not show compassion to today's soldiers? How can we think that He would look any differently on them than He did toward the soldiers who would nail Him to the Cross?

God didn't send you into combat. Another human did. God however created who you are inside. The ability to be willing to lay down your life for the sake of others was in you the day you were born. While God allows freewill, for good and for evil, He also has a place in His heart for all of His children. We humans however let go of His hand at the time we need to hold onto it the most.

When tragedy and trauma strike, we wonder where God was that He allowed it to happen. Then we blame ourselves. We do the "if" and " but" over and over again in our own minds thinking it was our fault and the trauma was a judgment from God. Yet we do not consider that God could very well be the reason we survived it all.

PTSD is a double edge cut to the person. The trauma strikes the emotions and the sense that God has abandoned us strikes at the soul. There is no greater sense of loss than to feel as if God has left you alone especially after surviving trauma and war. If you read the passage of Jesus and the Roman, you know that this would be impossible for God to do to you. Search your soul and you will find Him still there.

For the last story on this we have none other than the Arch Angel Michael. The warrior angel. If God did not value the warrior for the sake of good, then why would He create a warrior angel and make him as mighty as he was?

Michael has a sword in one hand and a scale in the other. God places things in balance for the warriors.

And in John 15:
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

When it comes to waging war, issuing orders, God will judge the hearts and minds of those who sent you and He will also know your's. If you feel you need to be forgiven, then ask for it and you will be forgiven. Yet if you know in your heart the basis of your service was that of the willingness to lay down your life for your friends, then ask to be healed. Know this. That if Jesus had the compassion for a Roman how could He have any less compassion for you?

Because the military is in enough trouble already trying to evangelize soldiers for a certain branch of Christianity, understand this is not part of that. It's one of the benefits of having I don't care what faith you have or which place of worship you attended. If you were a religious person at any level before combat, your soul is in need of healing as well. There is a tremendous gift when the psychological healing is combined with the spiritual healing. If you have a religious leader you can talk to, please seek them out.



Kathie Costos