At the previous church, an elderly gentleman told me the same story again and again, whenever I visited him. He was a veteran of the Second World War and had served as an air-force pilot. He still felt guilty about dropping bombs on towns. He wondered who would have been killed, the soldiers who were against him or the innocent people who were living there. What he had done, as his duty as an air-force officer, had been stuck in his mind for a long time. So he kept on telling me the same story repeatedly. He was a kind, nice man and a faithful Christian, but he could not resolve the trauma that he suffered more than fifty years ago when he was in his early twenties.
Of course, he shared with me many things about his family life and others. He was living a comfortable life even though he had become a widower recently at that time. But the guilty feeling that he might have killed innocent people remained in his mind as unfinished business. I tried to help him out with understanding and advice. I told him that for me it seemed that there was nothing wrong with him and what he had done, because all that he had done was not by his intention but rather it had happened because he was required to carry out his duty and responsibility as a fighter on the battle field. Although he didn't see any dead bodies of innocent people and fully understood his job in the military, he could not help but keep on thinking of the falling bombs.
This kind of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has become a serious social problem today. I am not an expert in this field but I have been concerned with this matter as a pastoral care aspect. An article that I read stated that almost half of the earth's population have or might somehow acquire some kind of PTSD symptom during their life. Since PTSD symptoms show up in many different ways, responding to them requires different approaches depending on each case. It is therefore very hard to generalize which way is the best way to deal with them. A clear point is that we have to deal with the symptoms of PTSD in some way when they happen.
When something is stuck in our mind, what shall we do? The simple answer is that we have to get it out of our mind, but how? Research and study of PTSD have led to many drugs and programs that are currently available for addressing this problem. I believe that they may be helpful to mitigate the symptoms of PTSD. Since some people who are in a certain situation develop PTSD and others in the same situation don't, this problem seems to be very much a personal and individual matter. Each sufferer has to find a help by oneself, or with the assistance of others, and decide what is the best and the most effective way of dealing with it. Jesus said, "This kind can come out only through prayer" (Mark 9:29). When we believe in the power of prayer, then in our prayer a way of healing may be found!
