Last modified: Friday, November 13, 2009 11:15 AM PST The Natural Way — War within By Janice Stramel Are you a committed, convinced, convicted Christian? Do you believe the Bible to be true and absolute? Do you try your level best to follow what God says in it? If you said yes, then you will understand what I am about to say: If you sincerely feel in the very deepest place of your heart that your religious beliefs are true and absolute, you can’t live in peace if your lifestyle doesn’t line up with what your heart tells you. Instead, you will have constant turmoil dominating your soul. War within. It makes no difference if your religious beliefs are correct or not. What you unequivocally believe to be true is what drives you. As a committed and convinced Christian and a licensed clinical professional counselor, I take the liberty to say something else: If Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan fully embraced the Islam religion, he was living in constant confusion. True, he was in a ministry of healing some unimaginably wounded and maimed soldiers throughout his career, which can cause tremendous trauma to the caretaker alone. But if, as I said, he truly embraced his Islamic beliefs, his spiritual being was taking an even greater beating. In a recent article by Michael Moss in the New York Times, an acquaintance of Hasan’s said, “(Hasan) said he should quit the Army. In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christians or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.” Webster defines alliance as the duty of being loyal to one’s country, etc; devotion, as to a cause. At the start of the attack, Hasan reportedly jumped on a desk and shouted, “Allahu akbar,” which is Arabic for “God is great.” I believe Maj. Hasan was so very twisted by what he was doing and what he believed he should be doing that it became the ruination of him. And the 13 dead and 30 wounded. I believe that to expect devout Muslims to fight a war with people of the same religion is insanity. I believe to do so will cause more of what we saw at Fort Hood last week. For comments or questions, contact Janice at Christian Counseling Services, 100 S. Iowa Ave., Fruitland, ID 83619, (208) 452-4378. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the Argus Observer.