LAW ENFORCEMENT AND PTSD - OBJECTIVE TRUTH

A few comments are needed before we get into our topic, law enforcement, and PTSD. In the many articles and research papers I've studied about law enforcement, one of the main ideas promoted is finding meaning in challenging and dangerous situations combat vets and First Responders face regularly. The question I have asked about my time in Vietnam is, who determines the actual meaning of any given situation? After a firefight and you have two KIAs and six WIAs, we can only respond with, "It don't mean nothin'." "Vietnam, what a waste!" "It was a senseless war."

If we ask ten different people, we will receive ten different explanations for understanding what we've gone through. Who's right? Well, you choose which idea you like best, and that becomes the correct answer; you have secured the meaning unless the boss tells you what it means, and that becomes the correct answer. They are older and wiser. They must be right. Three nights later, you wake up screaming and realize nobody's answer is correct.

Victor Frankl approached the question of finding meaning in terrible situations. Frankl survived a Nazi Concentration camp during WWII.  Tyler DeVries writes this about Frankl's book, Man's Search For Meaning, "Viktor Frankl passed through the darkest depths of human’s capacity for evil, and yet he didn’t emerge angry, resentful, or nihilistic, but rather encouraged, optimistic, and hopeful by what he described as man’s ultimate freedom and responsibility in life—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances."

Frankl's response to suffering went something like this: If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. 

Unless you've been out of town on Mars for the past few years, you missed the attitude shift toward law enforcement, and it ain't for the better. I love the YouTube Karen series, watching entitled people treat your profession with utter contempt. Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, I would never have said anything disparaging toward a police officer. That doesn't mean I wasn't rebellious. The police could only throw me in jail. My dad could kill me. 

What can I give you now that is objective and true for all time and eternity? Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 13:1-7 fits the bill. Time doesn't permit me to speak to each verse as comprehensively as I want, but suffice it to say that you are hopefully more interested in what God says than what the population at large believes is true about you and your profession.

There is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.

The instant you raised your hand and swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the prevailing laws of this state, your authority reached beyond and above that given by the state's authority. Your authority came from God to wear your badge and weapon. Remember that. Yours is a heavenly authority that has no higher source.

The apostle Paul wrote this when Nero reigned, roughly A.D. 63. Rome took to itself all authority, and for the most part, the world was relatively peaceful, the pax romana. "The Pax Romana is a roughly 200-year-long period of Roman history (27 B.C. to A.D. 180) which is identified as a golden age of increased and sustained Roman imperialism, relative peace and order, prosperous stability, hegemonic power, and regional expansion. This is despite several revolts and wars, and continuing competition with Parthia." 

By Jesus' and Paul's day, the Jews wanted to throw off the Roman yoke and install their king. They wanted the miracle worker, Jesus, to be their king, but He refused (Jn. 6:15ff). So, Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome. A "considerable portion" of the Christians in the church in Rome were Jews. The historian Josephus informs us that after the Jewish edict lapsed, many Jews returned to Rome, but they hadn't forgotten. It is this anti-Roman sentiment that Paul writes here in Romans 13. 

Paul admonishes these Jewish believers. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and those who have opposed it will receive condemnation upon themselves. Let's give objective, divine meaning to the attitude too many U.S. citizens have about your profession. The second a person raises their voice to you, against you, they raise it immediately against and toward God. Assuming you are promoting a professional attitude as so many of you do, you have the God of the universe standing next to you. 

I know that raises all kinds of questions that I can't answer right now. Some of you have lost close friends to this job. February 5, 1968, my world turned upside down when I lost two close buddies in the same attack. What I can say definitively is that God sent His Son to die for sinners like you and me. God the Father knows intimately the loss of a Son. Jesus, the Father's Son, knows what PTSD is because He sweat great drops of blood over His decision to willingly lay down His life for sinners, all of whom hated Him, Jews and Gentiles. They and we all yelled, "Crucify! Crucify Him!"

3 For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority?  . . . But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. 

When some people react to you doing your job, not out of feat of your God-ordained authority, they are shaking their fists in the air at God. You are merely the "mediator," if you will, between the person and God. In the section of Romans where Paul indicts the whole world under sin, Paul writes,

for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; 10 as it is written,

“There is none righteous, not even one; 11 There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; 12  All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” 

Paul concludes his argument of the total sinfulness of humanity before God, he concludes with this statement, 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  If people show you no fear, and I use that noun, not in a sense of cringing attitude, but in a show of something like respect, their attitude is the same toward God. They have no respect for God and it shows in their attitude toward you. That is objective truth. 

 4 for it (law enforcement) is a minister of God to you for good.

One of the comments on the Youtube Karen vignettes so often repeated by the narrators is something like, "These officers are showing incredible patience with this Karen when they don't have to." This is the definition of you being a minister of God for our good.

for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.

You are God's minister, every bit as holy as the preacher who stands in the pulpit on Sunday. I'm not saying you are a believer in Jesus. What Paul says is your status as a law enforcement officer is one of holy to God. God's servant. 

William Hendriksen writes, 

"For the word 'ministers' Paul here uses a word (pl. of leitourgos; cf. liturgy) which generally has religious implications. Thus angels are God’s ministers (Heb. 1:7) and ministering spirits (Heb. 1:14). Very properly the word is used with reference to priests, and in Heb. 8:2 Christ, in his capacity as highpriest, is called 'a minister (leitourgos) of the sanctuary, the true tabernacle …' Also very properly Paul calls himself 'a minister (leitourgos) of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles' (Rom. 15:16). Nevertheless, here in Rom. 13:6 Paul, instead of using the more common word (pl. of diakonos, cf. deacon), as a designation of these servants who collect taxes, calls them leitourgoi; i.e., ministers; in fact, 'God’s ministers.'

"Is not the implication this, that, in the final analysis, the governing authorities owe their authority not to people but to God to whom they are responsible for all their actions; and that the citizens should so regard them; and, when these officials faithfully carry out their duty, even that of collecting taxes, should so honor them?"

William Hendriksen and Simon J. Kistemaker, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, vol. 12–13, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1953–2001), iii.