What is religious faith?

 

For most of this study’s participating patients, their definition of faith as a meaning-making process had a religious or spiritual framework. Many patients even named the source of their framework in a clearly Christian context, such as this 50-year-old, who declared,

It gave me the faith and strength to persevere and fight harder—knowing God was with me even in my weakest time. I truly give Him the glory for my survival, so I may serve Him better and a little longer.

Meaning is made out of a transformative process, a filter that frames reality from a religious perspective. The capacity to give meaning to the events of the BC patient’s life, for the vast majority, comes via religious faith. A faith that assigns positive meanings to impossible situations, transforms reality creating a new space, a new universe, the universe of faith. Things that cannot be understood are thus accepted; a 73-year-old Catholic patient described her faith-reframing process including God—“Accepting and understanding God even in distress and despair for what I cannot understand.” What is it about faith that has such a grip over people allowing them to change the meaning of life and its cruelest manifestations of terror into a positive door to “God’s will”? For instance, this 76-year-old charismatic Protestant patient described her experience with faith:

Faith is real [the Bible says substance]. When I pray and find God’s will, I receive that thing or way, and there is an exhilaration that is equal to or more satisfying than if I had it right now because I have Jesus; Whatever He gives is precious.

Her beliefs and faith are intertwined with her feelings and emotions; her faith follows her feelings, for her beliefs and emotions go hand in hand. The role of beliefs and religious symbolismhas been studied, and the quality of one’s religious convictions and religiosity, as well as many other aspects of the role of religion, have been explored from psychological, anthropological, and behavioral perspectives.

In this study, we approached the understanding of faith as a construct to be explained as a human phenomenon in the context of BC patients’ experiences, not as a defining of doctrinal understanding based on a perceived revelation from God. At the same time, however, we looked at the theobiological interfacing of theology and science as these concern faith. Although the focus is phenomenological, the knowledge gained by exploring how to better define or elucidate the meaning of faith as experienced by BC patients will be given within a Judeo-Christian context.

Thus, the definition of faith expressed via psychological and qualitative research methods will elucidate religious issues from a phenomenological approach interfacing the doctrinarian or theological definition of faith with the issues of behavioral science and philosophy. In doing so, the quest of this study fits Rayburn and Richmond’s (1998, 2001) theobiology. This study seeks to further define the meaning of the term faith as an emotion, something personally experienced and felt, by seeking to define a heavily loaded religious term such as faith. Using a psychological construct such as emotions, this study seeks to explore both religion and science, the quest of theobiology.

Introducción al tema de johnnycpr.org

Los humanos nos caracterizamos por nuestras maneras individuales y colectivas. Nuestras culturas nos unen y nos dividen. La individualidad de cada uno es estudiada por la psicología esta individualidad también nos une y nos divide. La religión es la manifestación mas compleja de las tres que son el tema central de este website titulado en ingles--johnnycpr.org--johnny on culture, psychology and religion. En castellano el nombre es el mismo, johnny en cultural, psicología, y religión. Mi interés en estas tres esta basado tanto en mi vida profesional como en mi vida personal.

 

La individualidad de cada humano es llamada de variadas maneras: personalidad, carácter, psique, o simplemente el ser. Todas estas maneras de identificar al ente individual que habita en cada uno de nosotros, como manifestación de la mente, son imperfectas maneras de capturar la realidad descrita. La cultura es identificada por los elementos que comparte con todos los miembros del grupo en cuestión. La sociedad esta organizada para promover, proteger y bien sea propagar o preservar las culturas de cada grupo de seres humanos. Sociedad / institución / ente-individual; son tres niveles organizativos que están definidos por cada cultura del Planeta Tierra.

 

La manera en que definimos los términos, el léxico que usamos, nos atrapa en una disciplina especifica. Yo estoy sujeto al espacio-intelectual que se crea en la intersección de tres disciplinas. Psicología, religión, y cultura (cultura como termino dentro de la psicología cultural) son mi habitación en el cosmos cibernético. No las tres completas sino en su encuentro fenomenológico.

 

Este website se dedicara al dialogo que surge cuando pensamos y sopesamos estas tres áreas del saber humano con el propósito de describirlas y de fomentar su estudio. ¡Gracias por visitarme!