We now turn to the controversial subject of women in combat addressed by one of the authors. Meagher states that there is an increased percentage of women in the military who have had an effect on the overall numbers diagnosed with PTSD. She contends that studies show “that PTSD is twice as common in women as among men” (Meagher, p.92). She doesn’t give a good answer for this. I would argue that women don’t belong on the battlefield. God didn’t create women for that role. The responsibility here falls on men, particularly in the form of leadership.
The pattern established by God throughout the Bible is that men, not women, bear responsibility (lead) to serve in combat if war is necessary (Gen. 14:14; Num. 31:3,21,49; Deut. 20:5-9,13-14; Josh. 1:14-18; 6:3,7,9; 8:3; 10:7; 1 Sam. 16:18; 18:5; 2 Sam. 11:1; 17:8; 23:8-39; Ps. 45:3-5; Song of Sol. 3:7-8; Isa. 42:13), Volume 2 No. 2 (March 1997) of The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

The reason why women are more susceptible to the effects of PTSD is because God did not wire them to be in combative roles. The author either purposefully ignores this whole issue or fears to uncover the truth. What we have here is confusion over the fundamental meaning of gender role-identity in combat. It is about our society’s negligence in upholding gender roles and responsibilities.

When the truth claims of Scripture are silenced by humanistic philosophies, the truth is re-packaged in strange forms. Kingsley Browne, law professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, makes this very point in a new book called Co-Ed Combat: the New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars. In an interview with Newsweek, he said, “The evidence comes from the field of evolutionary psychology. . . . Men don’t say, ‘This is a person I would follow through the gates of hell.’ Men aren’t hard-wired to follow women into danger. If you leave God out, the perceived “hard-wiring” appears to be “evolutionary psychology.”

I agree with John Piper’s comments who responds to Browne’s argument by saying, “If God is in the picture, it has other names. We call it “the work of the law written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). We call it true manhood as God meant it to be. As usual, the truth that comes in the alien form of “evolutionary psychology” gets distorted. It is true that “men aren’t hard-wired to follow women into danger.” But that’s misleading. The issue is not that women are leading men into danger. The issue is that they are leading men. Men aren’t hard-wired to follow women, period. They are hard-wired to get in front of their women—between them and the bullets. They are hard-wired to lead their women out of danger and into safety. And women, at their deepest and most honest selves, give profound assent to this noble impulse in good men. That is why co-ed combat situations compromise men and women at their core and corrupt even further the foolhardy culture that put them there”. http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13474

The “foolhardy culture” Piper is referring to is the perspective of contemporary culture which stands in direct opposition to the Truth-centered worldview presented in the Bible. And that’s why this culture and its co-ed military are heading in the direction of social insanity-evolutionary psychology at its best!

One of the authors rightly recognizes the myth of the heroic warrior by saying, “brave in battle and impervious to the psychological damage of warfare” (Meagher, supra note 2, p.46). Both authors claim that this myth has been affected by the changing face of PTSD. I disagree. It may be that PTSD has reminded our society that this is the case. But the fragility of the human psyche is as old as the Garden of Eden (Gen.2). Herein lies the deception of mankind. ” Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. (Colossians 2:8).

“When societies choose not to live according to the absolute truth of God’s Word they will buy into a lie. The “cosmic battle” which I have referred to in the past is a confrontation between two Gods: Jehovah, the one true God and Satan, the false God. This may sound simplistic philosophically, but nonetheless it is true. Christians (and the world) are easily influenced by the lies of Satan in their perspective on life and reality” (Del Tackett, The Truth Project Notes).

The changing face of PTSD is really not changing at all as the authors admit. What is changing is the ongoing deception of the evil one “repackaging” the same lie he told Adam and Eve in the Garden thousands of years ago. Again, we have to ask ourselves, what is truth? If we believe it is a reality which exists within the natural realm (naturalism), then we will succumb to the same false worldview of Carl Sagan who said that, “The cosmos is all that is, ever was, or ever will be”. The cosmic battle is not between two philosophical ideas of heroism and PTSD. It is a battle between the sinfulness of man and the liberating truth of God.