Religious Perspectives on Human Suffering: Implications for Medicine and Bioethics

Abstract

The prevention and relief of suffering has long been a core medical concern. But while this is a laudable goal, some question whether medicine can, or should, aim for a world without pain, sadness, anxiety, despair or uncertainty. To explore these issues, we invited experts from six of the world's major faith traditions to address the following question. Is there value in suffering? And is something lost in the prevention and/or relief of suffering? While each of the perspectives provided maintains that suffering should be alleviated and that medicine's proper role is to prevent and relieve suffering by ethical means, it is also apparent that questions regarding the meaning and value of suffering are beyond the realm of medicine. These perspectives suggest that medicine and bioethics has much to gain from respectful consideration of religious discourse surrounding suffering.

Suffering and Salutogenesis: A Conceptual Analysis of Lessons for Psychiatry From Existential Positive Psychology (PP2.0) in the Setting of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…PP2.0-like PP1.0-is not exclusively an approach related to health, as it also addresses questions such as organizational health and resilience (Mayer and Oosthuizen, 2020) and collaboration between cultures in a changing world (Barmeyer and Mayer, 2020); however, in this paper, it is the health-related aspects of this framework that will be discussed. A central aspect of PP2.0 is the acknowledgment that suffering and adversity, rather than being seen as "problems" to be "solved, " are an integral part of human existence-an insight that replicates the traditional wisdom of both Western and Eastern religious traditions (Fitzpatrick et al, 2016) as well as the salutogenic principle that tension or stress can be adaptive (Fekete et al, 2020). In other words, attempts to prevent or minimize suffering-as per the conventional medical modelmay lead to a minimization or even a negation of the value of suffering, particularly in settings where such minimization is not feasible (Wong and Tomer, 2011;Wong, 2020).…”

Suffering, Mental Health, and Psychological Well-being During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study of U.S. Adults With Chronic Health Conditions

“…Suffering can be characterized as an undesired experience that involves enduring under loss or privation of some perceived good ( VanderWeele, 2019a ). It is a negatively valenced subjective experience that threatens a person's sense of self ( Cassell, 2004 ; Fitzpatrick et al., 2016 ) by, amongst others, thwarting progress towards meaningful goal-oriented pursuits, disrupting the continuity of valued social connections, or challenging well-established views, beliefs, and assumptions about the world ( Tate & Pearlman, 2019 ). Some features of suffering (e.g., its intensity or duration) resemble those that may also accompany physical symptoms, pain, or illness ( VanderWeele, 2019a ).…”

The importance of cultural psychological perspectives in pain research: Towards the palliation of Cartesian anxiety

“…For example, within the world of sports one often hears such statements as “no pain, no gain”—asserting positive, desirable correlates of pain. These statements can often shift so as to express pain as being a positive indicator in itself, as in another sports expression asserting that “pain is weakness leaving the body.” Pain can even go from being a negative affective state to even meaning its opposite, as in the lyrics of the John Mellencamp song, “Hurts So Good.” In a similar vein, there is a large literature on how various religious traditions often see pain not only as desirable, but as a necessary part of the human condition, or even as a holy experience (Fitzpatrick et al, 2016). Similarly, there is a considerable literature, both scholarly and popular, on the links between pain and pleasure, arguably precisely because these connections are surprising and apparently contradictory, and yet somehow sound and seem even personally familiar to many people (e.g., the writings of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch or Marquis de Sade).…”