How a war veteran found path back to faith

The 1968 Tet Offensive was the bloodiest period of the war in Vietnam. Our combat platoon was set up in a defensive perimeter, and I felt safe for the moment.

The Vietnamese boy was happy to be riding a bike and yelled as he rode up to our perimeter. The bike detonated the anti-tank mine placed there for the Americans – except in this case, a 12-year old boy was the victim.

The blast blew him into the air in an arc, and he landed with a sickening thud.

I was wounded in the blast but was able to get to the boy. One of his legs was blown off completely; the other hung on by skin and cartilage. Shiny organs showed through wounds in his side.

Combat medics stuffed bandages into the most grievous wounds. Within 15 minutes a medevac helicopter took him away to a field aid station where he died.

Kneeling in his blood, I wondered where God was. This was hell!

For the next 39 years I struggled with that question: “Where was God?” In the confusion of battle I couldn’t find the answer.

After coming back from the war I tucked the incident and the question into the back of my mind. God did not seem like someone I could talk to, so I ignored him.

Seldom did I have any insight into the deadness of my relationship with God or the reason he seemed distant. I saw the world as cruel and filled with violence.

My children changed that worldview. The birth of my three daughters deeply changed my attitude toward life. It prompted a profound respect for the giving of life.

I had dealt in taking life in the Vietnam War. Those children brought a new view, that of giving life instead of taking it. But my questions about God were still buried deep within my heart as my children grew.

Job in the Old Testament suffered through the loss of his family, his goods and, finally, his own body was covered with sores from head to toe. The story of Job is a story of suffering and faithfulness. Even at his lowest, when his own wife told him to curse God and die, Job kept his faithfulness to God.

The lesson from Job is that the just will also suffer and that suffering will be a test of their faith. I found that lesson hard to swallow.

Dropped into Vietnam, I was engaged in the ultimate test of my faith, an as-yet-untested faith. Combat changed who I was in a deep, far-reaching way. At 19, I wasn’t meant to have my faithfulness to God tested so severely.

In my immature faith I faulted God for not showing himself at the moment I needed his comfort for my brutalized psyche at the boy’s death. Because of that judgment I turned away from God for almost four decades.

In recent years I wanted something more meaningful in my spiritual life. For the first time I sought to reach out to God to find reconciliation, but could not find the path to reach him.

Then an unexpected pathway opened to me. My widowed mother needed to attend church and I was the one who took her. In the beginning I went to church only for her benefit, then realized slowly that I was there for reasons of my own, rediscovering meaning in the gathering of the saints on Sundays.

That path opened up a new view of my relationship with God. Along that path I discovered that Jesus is the answer to all the wounds of this life. Through his own wounding Jesus reconciled mankind with God.

“Where was God?” isn’t a question in my life anymore. My faith is not a question either.

I found a path back after wandering far from God for so many years. For my faith in God today I am grateful.