Benimoff's journal ends Jan. 22 of this year. The last
lines read: "I do not want anything to do with God. I am sick of
religion. It is a crutch for the weak ... We make God into what we
need for the moment. I hate God. I hate all those who try to
explain God when they really don't know." By late March, during his
first interview with NEWSWEEK, he was recovering his faith but the
pain had not subsided. "The symptoms are still there; this past
year has been the most challenging of my life," he says. "But I
have a new relationship with God. I tend to be much more blunt with
him."
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Chaplains are unarmed, but they go where the troops go.
They help in any way they can. "When there were 17 or 18 bodies, it
was more than mortuary services could handle," says Army Chaplain
(Lt. Col.) Dick Olmstead, now retired, speaking of his deployment
to Kuwait and Iraq in 2004. "Maybe it's not the brightest move to
have chaplains opening body bags to place 40-pound bags of ice on
dead soldiers, but you have to go where your hands and heart are
needed." Still, after 20 or 30 ramp ceremonies, he says, "you can't
help but wonder if God is really listening to you."
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He's racked by contradiction. He is "getting to impact
soldiers spiritually ... and personally as they go through this
difficult time ... I am in the middle of history and I have a
captive audience!" Yet looking back, he says, he could see that he
was reaching a point "when your cup of grief gets full, you can't
hear another horrible story." In a single two-week period there
were four suicide bombings in the area he was stationed. He
counseled his men on many questions he was struggling with himself.
"They would ask me: if I'm a child of God, then why isn't God
protecting me?" he says. "In the book of Job we see that God rains
on the just and the unjust, but that's not always easy to accept.
Some soldiers stop believing in God, others grow closer to him.
Everything is accelerated in a war zone."
Mebbe this is what Davidche means
in his divine intervention thread....
