Chaplain's Column: Is Anyone Up There Listening?

Somewhere in my training for chaplaincy I ran across some statistics about cops and organized religion. If I were better organized, I could lay my hands on the notes; or if my memory was better, I could give you the exact numbers and their source. I can do neither. The bottom line stuck with me, though: the great majority of law enforcement recruits believe in God and are active members of a faith community, but after a few years working in law enforcement, most have dropped away. This is not only the result of shift work and new guys having to work weekends and holidays. It reflects a profound change in life experience and the ineffectiveness of the recruits' faith to help them make sense of their new reality.

Most people raised in a faith form their spiritual understanding early on--but that means they form their basic spiritual perspective before they have had much life experience. We generally try to protect our children from things that are dangerous, frightening, ugly, or beyond their ability to understand. If we picture the range of human behavior as a straight line running from the goodness and holiness of, say, Mother Teresa, and the utter depravity and cruelty of Adolph Hitler, it's a safe bet that most kids don't spend a lot of time exposed to the "Hitler" end of things. (I'm not complaining--this is a good thing.)

But then the young man or woman becomes a cop, and whatever shelter he or she enjoyed in childhood is blown to bits.

If there is a murder, suicide, unattended death, or accidental death in their district, they are sent to the scene. If there is an assault, neglect, abuse, or an accident, they are sent to the scene. If there is deceit or larceny or intoxication or violence, they are sent to the scene. Young people are notorious for thinking they are immortal, invulnerable--and don't most cops start out their careers pretty young? But these young people have their noses rubbed regularly in human mortality, vulnerability, and the fragility of life. They witness way too much death, way too much human stupidity and evil. And although they set themselves to an honorable task, they find themselves targeted by the resentment of the very public they strive to protect. Whether this resentment is expressed in petty ways or in lethal ways, cops have to learn to protect themselves from the public as well as from "the bad guys." Being a good guy is not enough to protect them, and they learn that early on.

It is not surprising, then, that the faith system that worked just fine in younger years can no longer bear the weight of the seasoned cop's life experience. It is not surprising that it becomes less able to provide a firm place to stand in the midst of the storm, or to give guidance in times of confusion, or comfort in the face of anguish. Many cops experience spiritual loss. When that happens, they can lose their sense of purpose, and even lose their own moral moorings. It can affect every aspect of their lives, their personal relationships as well as their professional ones. We see everything through the lens of our spirituality, and if our spirituality becomes one of despair and fatalism, that hopelessness will bleed into every corner of our lives.

The irony is that religions of all sorts deal with exactly these same issues--mortality, sin, the gap between how things should be and how they in fact are, the injustice of innocent suffering. The problem is not that religion is incapable of addressing such things or helping us live victoriously in the face of such things. The problem is that a childish grasp of religion is insufficient to carry us through them--but many of us never continued religious education into adulthood.

It is as inaccurate to base one's spiritual understanding totally on the negative aspects of human behavior as it is to base one's spiritual understanding totally on the positive aspects of it. The fact is, both are reality. We are capable of nobility and holiness and we are capable of depravity and evil. Both are true. To lose sight of either reality is dangerous, leading to out-of-touch optimism on one hand or cynicism and despair on the other.

If you are one of the many cops who find faith increasingly irrelevant to your life, let me encourage you to take a closer look at it, this time being intentional about approaching it as an adult. Don't assume a Sunday School education completed by 8th grade has accurately captured the wisdom of your tradition, whatever that tradition may be!

I do not know any quick or easy way to restore faith or rebuild belief systems, but it certainly can be done. It requires honesty about one's own experience of life, persistence in asking and listening, and the ability to admit that one still has things to learn--in other words, openness to the subject. Just one word of advice: don't wait until "it" hits the fan to begin this work. Trying to rebuild your faith system while you are in the middle of a crisis is rather like trying to learn a new swim stroke when you are drowning--you aren't giving yourself the best chance to avoid drowning or learn the new stroke, either one!