ABSTRACT
Global meaning systems help people make sense of their experiences, but suffering can violate global meaning and create distress. One type of potential violation is conflict between one's experience of suffering and one's deeply-held beliefs about God as loving, powerful, and just. The problem of theodicy-why an all-powerful and all-loving God would allow suffering-has long been an important theological and philosophical concern, but little is known about how theodicy plays out psychologically for religious individuals facing serious life difficulties. To address this issue within a specific religious tradition, Christianity, we drew upon philosophy, Christian theology, and psychology to develop the construct of theodical struggling. Through theological and philosophical input, we generated a 28-item pool and conducted 10 cognitive interviews with a diverse sample of Christian adults. In three consecutive online studies of Christian adult samples, we reduced the scale to 11 items through PCA, found a strong one-factor solution using EFA, and found support for the one-factor solution along with preliminary reliability and validity. This newly-developed Theodical Struggling Scale represents an important advance in understanding individuals' experiences of ruptures in their beliefs regarding God's goodness and paves the way for future research on this topic. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04642-w.
ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, a debate has arisen concerning the history and philosophy of hospice and palliative care. This critical essay extends this debate by linking the analysis of Dame Cicely Saunders' writings with the concept of worldview, exploring the modern hospice movement vis-à-vis Saunders' approach to terminal care. Worldviews as cultural classifications of reality provide groups and individuals with meaning to navigate everyday and liminal situations. Using this concept in connection to the discipline of the sociology of knowledge, it is possible to grasp how the origins and principles of modern hospice care, from which current palliative care practices evolved, relate to the sociocultural environment of the postwar era in the West. The analysis focuses on a selected body of Saunders' writings, mainly written in the 1960s and 1970s, and discusses different components and functions of her revolutionary care paradigm. In this essay, I show that Saunders' vision of hospice care entails much more than a set of health care practices; it is a complex construct of knowledge and ideas that offers distinct procedures to shelter the dying from pain and loss of meaning. Her vision builds on medical advances and incorporates norms and attitudes related to secularised Protestant and New Age culture, which fostered privatised types of religion and individualistic ideologies and theodicies.
ABSTRACT
The metaphorical appropriation of quantum entanglement (non-local relational holism) helps to conceptualize the physical relationship of God to creation in a way that can support the understanding of deep incarnation. The relational holism of Divine entanglement helps clarify how deep incarnation is possible. The pandemic is then approached as an example of evolutionary theodicy that can be addressed through such entangled deep incarnation. This in turn provides the basis for deep resurrection, which, while acknowledging suffering and death in the natural world, also affirms hope and life in Christ.
ABSTRACT
This study examined the role of theodicies or theological/philosophic attempts to resolve existential dilemmas related to evil and human suffering in chaplains' professional quality of life (ProQOL). A nationally representative sample of 298 VHA chaplains completed the recently developed Views of Suffering Scale (Hale-Smith, Park, & Edmondson, 2012 ) and ProQOL-5 (Stamm, 2010 ). Descriptive results revealed that 20-50% endorsed strong theistic beliefs in a compassionate deity who reciprocally suffers with hurting people, God ultimately being responsible for suffering, and that suffering can provide opportunities for intimate encounters with God and personal growth. Other results indicated that chaplains' beliefs about human suffering were differentially linked with their sense of enjoyment/purpose in working with veterans. These results suggest that theodicies might serve as a pathway to resilience for individuals in spiritual communities and traditions in USA, particularly for clinicians and ministry professionals who are committed to serving the needs of traumatized persons.
Subject(s)
Clergy/psychology , Quality of Life , Religion , Adaptation, Psychological , Adult , Aged , Female , Humans , Male , Mental Health , Middle Aged , United States , United States Department of Veterans AffairsABSTRACT
Este artigo traça as condições de possibilidade - configuradas pelo processo de orientalização do Ocidente - para o surgimento de novos paradigmas em saúde nas sociedades ocidentais. Para tal, esboça uma análise do conceito de superfície de emergência, elaborado por Michel Foucault, e a seguir desenvolve o tema da orientalização do Ocidente tal como foi descrito por Colin Campbell. Associa a ascensão crescente das medicinas alternativas e o florescimento de novas práticas de saúde em nosso meio à alternância histórica de uma teodicéia ocidental para uma outra que é caracteristicamente oriental.
In this article we seek to describe the conditions - configured by the process of orientalization of the West - for the emergence of new health paradigms in western society. We set out an analysis of the concept of surfaces of emergence, as put forth by Michel Foucault, followed by an investigation of orientalization in the West as described by Colin Campbell. We use this to associate the growing rise of alternative medicines and the blossoming of new health practices in our midst with the historical alternation from one western theodicy to another that is characteristically oriental.