Spiritual Struggles: What Do They Add to a Christian Positive Psychology?

Julie J. Exline Case Western Reserve University

julie.exline@case.edu

Presentation for a Meeting of the Society for Christian Psychology entitled Towards a Christian Positive Psychology,

Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, Saturday, October 20, 2012

Positive Psychology Summer Institute Sea Ranch, California, 2001

Our host: Dr. Martin Seligman

Our conference center

Our views

But is it possible to be too positive?

Relentless positivity…

can feel forced, inauthentic, or disconnected

can’t capture the beauty of light and shadow

Uniform positivity…

What’s the right amount of ‘light’ to represent our human reality?

Heroic Journeys

have their share of trials…

Heroic Journeys

usually have storms…

And can heroes exist without their villains?

What might a Christian Positive Psychology

look like?

We could just add the “Happy Christian” layer…

forgiveness

Heaven

God’s love

prosperity

But wait! The Bible doesn’t stay cheerful for long…

SIN DEATH

Abraham: A ‘Reasonable’ Request from God?

Biblical Trials of the Israelites

Oppression

Confusion and Idolatry

Temptation and Sin

Exile

New Testament: Suffering and Death of Christ

Persecution of Early Christians

Stoning of Stephen

Paul in chains

Crucifixion of Peter

The Bible doesn’t shy away from struggle!

But we must have seeds of hope…

Is Struggle Worth It?

The Israelites did suffer in the wilderness… But they were on a great journey to the

promised land!

God Uses Our Struggles with Sin

•  to help us become “as silver refined”

•  or diamonds, formed under pressure.

For Jesus, the cross was not the end!

And in the end, what awaits us?

OK, back to this world…

Religious/Spiritual (R/S) Struggle from a Psychological Perspective

Our Early Attempts to Study R/S

Struggle

•  Religious Comfort & Strain Scale (Exline, Yali, & Sanderson, 2000)

•  Review chapters/articles (Exline & Rose, 2005; Exline, in press)

•  My main focus: anger toward God

Yali Sanderson

Assessment of R/S Struggle

•  Ken Pargament and colleagues –  Religious coping in response to negative

life events

–  Can be positive or negative

–  R/S struggle = negative religious coping

–  Widely used measures • RCOPE (Pargament, Koenig, & Perez,

2000).

• Brief RCOPE (Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998).

Empirically, What Do We Know

about R/S Struggle?

What’s Pretty Clear?

•  R/S struggles correlate with emotional distress. •  many cross-sectional studies (see Exline, in press, for a review)

•  In longitudinal studies, r/s struggles predict: –  higher mortality rates (Pargament, Koenig, Tarakeshwar, & Hahn, 2001) –  more depression (Pirutinsky, Rosmarin, Pargament, & Midlarsky, 2011)

•  Chronic struggles show stronger links with emotional distress than short-term struggles (Exline, Park, Smyth, & Carey., 2011; Pargament, Desai, & McConnell, 2006).

Does R/S Struggle Lead to Growth?

•  Still UNCLEAR! •  Mixed findings (Pargament et al., 2006) •  Growth is challenging to measure:

–  Character? Faith? Self-perceived growth? •  Is it the struggle, or the response to it, that à growth?

Types of Religious and Spiritual Struggle

•  Categories are based on a measure now being developed (Religious & Spiritual Struggle Scale; Exline, Pargament, Yali, & Grubbs, in preparation).

•  Divine (struggles with God) •  Intrapersonal (within the person)

–  Guilt –  Crises of life meaning –  Doubts/questions

•  Interpersonal •  Demonic

Anger at God

•  Common form of divine struggle (Exline, Park, Smyth, & Carey, 2011)

•  Often seen as morally wrong (Exline, Kaplan, & Grubbs, 2012)

•  Sample items: – Felt angry at God – Felt as though God had abandoned me

Anger at God: Can It Foster Growth?

•  Honest disclosure may increase intimacy with God. (Exline, Kaplan, & Grubbs 2012; Hall & Edwards, 2002)

•  Challenge old or simplistic ideas about God

Intrapersonal I: Guilt

•  Struggle to follow moral or spiritual principles

•  Examples: – worried that my actions were

morally or spiritually wrong –  felt guilty for not living up to my

moral standards

Guilt: What Good Is It?

•  Reality-based awareness of sin •  Can encourage repentance, reconciliation

with God & others

Intrapersonal II: Crises of Life

Meaning

•  Spirituality often involves a sense of deeper meaning in life

•  Struggle as absence of meaning

•  Sample items: –  felt as though my life had no deeper meaning –  questioned whether life really matters

Crises of Life Meaning: Where’s the Hope?

•  see the emptiness of the world’s values (e.g., materialism; social climbing)

•  seek God’s deeper purpose for your life

Intrapersonal III: Doubt and Confusion

•  doubts/questions about beliefs

•  implies distress (confusion, worry)

•  sample items: – worried about whether my beliefs

about religion/spirituality were correct

–  felt confused about my religious/spiritual beliefs

Doubt and Confusion: Possible Benefits?

•  Cultivate critical thinking •  Clarify what we truly believe vs. what

we’ve simply been told

Interpersonal

•  Discord with other people or institutions re: religious issues

•  Sample items: –  had conflicts with other people

about religious/spiritual matters –  felt hurt, mistreated, or offended by

religious/spiritual people

•  Learn power of love, courage, patience, humility, forgiveness…we may all need this “sandpaper.”

•  When religious systems become corrupt, you may be called to be part of the solution.

Interpersonal Struggles with Religion:

How Can They Help Us?

Demonic/ Supernatural Evil

•  Belief that devil or evil spirits are attacking us or causing negative events

•  Understudied (despite RCOPE subscale) •  Sample items:

– worried that the problems I was facing were the work of the devil or evil spirits

–  felt attacked by the devil or by evil spirits

•  If Satan is indeed active in the world, isn’t it better to be aware of it?

•  Practice spiritual warfare

Demonic Appraisals: What Purpose Might They

Serve?

Conclusion

If struggle is indeed a

catalyst for growth… or an important part of

life’s journey…

…then it has a place in Christian positive psychology.

Empirical work is

still in the early stages.

References Exline, J. J. (in press). Religious and spiritual struggles. In K. I. Pargament, J. J.

Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Volume 1). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Exline, J. J., Kaplan, K. J., & Grubbs, J. B. (2012, March 19). Anger, exit, and assertion: Do people see protest toward God as morally acceptable? Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0027667

Exline, J. J., Park, C. L., Smyth, J. M., & Carey, M. P. (2011). Anger toward God: Social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 129-148.

Exline, J. J., & Rose, E. (2005). Religious and spiritual struggles. In R. F. Paloutzian and C. L.Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 315-330). New York: Guilford.

Exline, J. J., Yali, A. M., & Sanderson, W. C. (2000). Guilt, discord, and alienation: The role of religious strain in depression and suicidality. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56, 1481-1496.

Hall, T. W., & Edwards, K. J. (2002). The spiritual assessment inventory: A theistic model and measure for assessing spiritual development. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41, 341-357.

References (cont.) Pargament, K. I., Desai, K. M., & McConnell, K. M. (2006). Spirituality:

A pathway to posttraumatic growth or decline? In L. G. Calhoun & R. G. Tedeschi (Eds.), Handbook of posttraumatic growth: Research & practice (pp. 121-137). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. M. (2000). The many methods of religious coping: Development and initial validation of the RCOPE. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56, 519–543.

Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., Tarakeshwar, N., & Hahn, J. (2001). Religious struggle as a predictor of mortality among medically ill elderly patients: A two-year longitudinal study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 161, 1881-1885.

Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. (1998). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 710–724.

Pirutinsky, S., Rosmarin, D.H., Pargament, K.I., & Midlarsky, E. (2011). Does negative religious coping accompany, precede, or follow depression among Orthodox Jews? Journal of Affective Disorders, 132(3), 401-405.