{"id":40220,"date":"2017-04-03T00:25:11","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T03:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=40220"},"modified":"2017-04-03T00:53:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-03T03:53:57","slug":"christian-marine-helps-vets-with-ptsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/03\/christian-marine-helps-vets-with-ptsd\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Marine Helps Vets with PTSD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Clayton Lassiter was a US Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he&#8217;s a pastor in Florida, and he&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/us\/florida-marine-veteran-pastor-starts-ptsd-support-group-1.457391\">aiming to help veterans<\/a> with some of the same struggles he had:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since January, three of Clayton Lassiter&#8217;s buddies from his military command have killed themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Having served with the Marine Corps during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lassiter has dealt with his own struggles. He&#8217;s had nightmares, flashbacks and used to have trouble being in unfamiliar environments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Notably, the article only mentions the VA once &#8212; to highlight that it is &#8220;overwhelmed.&#8221; Lassiter isn&#8217;t out to point people toward the VA; he&#8217;s trying to start a group of veterans helping veterans, potentially focusing on the area that helped him:\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Lassiter&#8217;s] wife, children and spiritual life helped him keep focus and avoid taking drugs or drinking excessively like other veterans, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The effort is notable because of the DoD and VA&#8217;s reluctance to institutionally affirm and proactively support the role of faith in conflict and post-conflict reintegration. The potential of a link between PTSD and moral injury has been discussed only academically, and a controversy-shy Department of Defense is averse to promoting religion as a legitimate means of coping with either &#8212; even <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2010\/10\/29\/the-moral-wounds-of-war-good-and-evil\/\">for US troops of faith<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As Lassiter&#8217;s own experience demonstrates, being a faithful man of Christ does not grant immunity from PTSD, but faith <em>can<\/em> provide the necessary foundation to cope with the traumas of combat experiences.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-layout=\"standard\" data-action=\"like\" data-size=\"small\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-share=\"true\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clayton Lassiter was a US Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he&#8217;s a pastor in Florida, and he&#8217;s aiming to help veterans with some of the same struggles he had: Since January, three of Clayton Lassiter&#8217;s buddies from his military command have killed themselves. Having served with the Marine Corps during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lassiter has dealt [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[58,96,6198,52,149,2,1165,225,10,171,1812],"class_list":["post-40220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-afghanistan","tag-christian","tag-clayton-lassiter","tag-iraq","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-moral-injury","tag-ptsd","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-veterans-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}