[0:04]Hi, I'm Stephanie Rell, and today I'm actually going to talk to you about something that has to do with my PhD. I'm, I'm halfway kidding, but I'm also not kidding because my PhD is in theological studies. So I did a lot of work around trauma theory and have some clinical training. I also have a master's in psychiatry and religion, so I, I've done a lot of work in trauma studies. But really, I teach theology, and part of my specialty is understanding how religions deal with suffering. The first religion I'm going to talk about is Hinduism. So Hinduism is a polytheistic religion. What that means is there are many gods, gods to represent different experiences, gods to represent certain themes, ideas, et cetera. And in this religion, the major core texts are the Vedas. Uh, anything you've heard of that has to do with yoga, that's real traditional, that's affiliated with Hinduism. Now, in Hinduism, the process of thinking about human suffering has to do with sort of what we could call like the worldview. It's a cyclical worldview, so we start with the concept of karma. This is simplistic and I'm simplifying it just in terms of a short YouTube video and our understanding. So, so know that the theology about any given religion is more complex than this and and how I'm going to describe karma is more complex than this. But on a, on a simplistic level, karma is, you know, you do something to somebody and it's going to come back to you, right? So that's that's part of the cycle. The cycle itself is called Samsara. So that's our cycle of death and rebirth, or death and regeneration, or death and reincarnation. Those words all mean something subtly different, but it gives you the idea that you once death occurs, uh, someone or something comes back in some other form to live out their next life until they reach the moksha, which is the release. That would be kind of the cycle. Suffering is understood in Hinduism within that cycle. In Hinduism, the idea of suffering poses no theological threat to the system. It's, it doesn't interfere with the gods. Suffering is caused by our minds and our actions, but it's also just present in the world. So it, we can try to relieve it, but it's probably not going to actually work until we hit moksha, or the idea of release. So, in that way, suffering has value. It has meaning, we can self-reflect on it, and it makes no threat to our belief system. So the second religion that I want to address is Buddhism. Oh, and just to let you know, I'm basically going through these chronologically, which means when they show up on the human, I don't know, play, play field, so to speak, right? So when, when they were practiced or developed, this is in chronological order, so Buddhism comes after Hinduism. So in Buddhism, we do not have the concept of a God. You may think of Buddha as a God, but Buddha is not a God. Buddha is a religious symbol, a religious leader, so to speak. It comes out of the idea of Siddhartha, who was a prince, who actually left his lavish life, uh, to meditate on the world's harms and developed this philosophical or psychological system, if you will, that's come to be known as Buddhism. So he started as kind of the first leader, first Buddha, perhaps, uh, and the word Buddha can be applied to a lot of different religious leaders. So Tick Not Han, who's a Tibetan monk, who practices Buddhism, he actually called Jesus a Buddha. So that gives you an idea that a Buddha can be multiple people, um, or or multiple people, rather, can serve as a Buddha. In Buddhism, there isn't one central text like a lot of other religions that we turn to for any advice. There are multiple texts. So we don't focus on any one for like the theological argument. Part of the reason why that's a little difficult within this religion is there are lots of different sort of cultural manifestations of what Buddhism is. For instance, different parts of Southeast Asia and Asia will express and experience Buddhism slightly different than other countries. So within Buddhism, the way that we can understand suffering is through something called the Four Noble Truths. The four noble truths go like this: Suffering exists, suffering has an origin, because suffering has an origin, it can be eradicated, and the way that suffering is eradicated is through the eightfold path. Which is basically behaviors like right thinking, mindfulness, uh, some other things that you've probably heard of, uh, a right perspective, that help us to keep aware of what suffering is, that it has an origin, and that it ultimately can be eradicated. It gets eradicated not in this plane of existence, but after Nirvana. So after our cyclical rebirths. So because we have this sort of a system that actually envisions suffering is part of all human existence, there is really no threat again to this theological system. Suffering is just a part of human life. So suffering is basically part of human life, it's also caused by our own actions, that's why the eightfold path is so important. It ultimately is something that we, if we're practicing Buddhists or we want to inform our lives with Buddhism, something that we reflect upon. And this kind of self-reflection, which I mentioned also in Hinduism, is actually really critical in Buddhism. So the idea that we're always paying attention, that we're aware, that we're looking at our own behaviors, that we're looking at the way we think about things, the way we react to things, because it may perpetuate or cause more suffering for ourself or others, that's really critical within Buddhism. But again, it poses no threat to the theological system. So suffering, it's just part of life and it's part of our job to pay attention to how we perpetuate it. The next religion I'm going to address is Judaism. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, all share a same origin. All have the same God and they're called the Abrahamic religions. One thing that I want to distinguish for you though, is that Christianity is an umbrella term over Catholicism and Protestantism.
[7:00]We also have Orthodox Christianity, which gets manifested, um, in Turkey, and Romania, and Greece, uh, and Russia. I'm not going to go so much into Orthodox. The distinctions, um, between Orthodox and Catholicism, for instance, are very, uh, detailed theologically. So I'll leave that aside for now and start with the first of the Abrahamic religions, which is Judaism. In Judaism, the central text is the Hebrew Bible, the Torah. Uh, some people like to call it the Old Testament. I shy away from that term. I like to use Hebrew Bible for the Jewish, um, major text and then Christian scriptures for the Christian major text. So those are the terminologies, uh, terminology that I use. So with each of these religions, I like to use a core principle that helps my students understand some of the central aspects of the religion. And one of the central aspects of Judaism is this concept of peoplehood. It's very important, the idea of community, uh, the, the idea of being a chosen people within the biblical text and I think an idea related to the way that rituals are performed, for instance around food in in Jewish culture.
[8:14]This concept of peoplehood gets perpetuated. The family is all together, everyone's coming together for Shabbat, uh, and so we get this idea of the peoplehood being very, very important. Now, this plays out in terms of suffering because there is a kind of integrated belief that suffering is happening with God, or with others. Now, suffering itself does pose a theological threat in in Judaism. And what that has to do with is the question of what some people call theodicy, which is how do we maintain the goodness of God in the face of evil, or perhaps we could talk about the idea of suffering being affiliated with evil. So if bad things are happening, how do we maintain the goodness of God? So that is a theological problem that exists in all the Abrahamic religions, the same. The, the Jewish response to that is, okay, it poses a problem. However, this is a practical and ethical religion. So there are practical and ethical ways of responding to that evil or to that level of suffering. So in Judaism, suffering is not necessarily to be accepted. It's not like we're going to go, okay, it's great, people are suffering, no, or that it's okay or that it's just a part. But it's considered kind of like a call and response, right? So if there's an experience of suffering evil, we're called to address it, and now, now there's something ethically, uh, that we have to respond to. We got to do something about it. So that's a very kind of Jewish framework. So the next religion I want to address is Roman Catholicism, which is my heritage, um, and I teach in a Catholic institution. So in Roman Catholicism, there is a little bit different of negotiation with suffering. Because the death of the death and resurrection of Christ is so central to the theology. There is a sort of, um, level of acceptance of suffering, both in the symbolism within the Catholic Church and within the experience of being Catholic itself. So if you don't know this, the, we have two different crosses within Christianity. Well, there are multiple crosses if we think about Orthodox as well, but we have Catholic and we have Protestant Christian. So the Catholic cross has Jesus, um, more frequently hanging from it, uh, after having been nailed to the cross during the crucifixion. And generally the, the cross with in Protestant Christianity is just going to be a cross alone, signifying Jesus's resurrection. Within Roman Catholicism, we have a few central texts. The, the Roman Catholics will refer to Hebrew Bible, they will look at the Christian scriptures, and then also within Catholicism, we look at what are called the apocrypha, which are some texts that Protestant Christians don't consider part of the canon, but the Catholic Church does. Judith is included in that and Esther included in that. I just say that because I really enjoy reading these, uh, parts of the scripture. Now, within Roman Catholicism, there is a threat to the theology related to suffering in terms of maintaining God's goodness, as I refer to with Judaism. And suffering is considered incomprehensible. However, especially if you look at the mystics, what we see in Catholicism is a sort of understanding of suffering as having to do with some way being in participation with Christ's own suffering. So that suffering doesn't have a kind of negative connotation necessarily because it has the potential to bring us closer to Christ. There are some problematics that arise related to that. However, theologically, that that is often how suffering is framed. So within Roman Catholicism, there is a sort of understanding that part of life is going to be suffering. Like we may not want it around, but it's here. And the point of reflection would have to do with thinking like, okay, I'm having this experience of suffering. But maybe this helps me understand Christ's experience or even the experiences of others at a different level. And so there is some value in suffering. Um, of course, if we're talking about radical evil, we have to kind of weigh and understand these things just a little bit differently than accepting them with our, with our palms open, so to speak, in terms of thinking about Christ and and and his wounding. But there still is theologically, this sort of, okay, suffering exists, we're going to deal with it in this way that we think about it as being somehow resembling the experience of Christ. So the next religion I'm going to turn to is Islam because chronologically, it actually comes prior to, uh, Protestant Christianity. And to be honest, I think from a, from a theological point of view, Islam is probably the religion that I know the most surface level because I haven't delved into the texts the same way that I have the other religions. So just to keep that in mind as I'm talking, uh, especially for any of you who are practicing. Um, I understand Islam also as one of the major, um, Abrahamic religions. The core text of Islam is the Quran, uh, which is distinguished from the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. Which are also considered sacred with within Islam, but different than the Quran because of the nature of the writing and and who did the writing. So in Islam, Muhammad is the transcriber of the word of God, so that the Quran, uh, is manifested and is, in fact, the words of God within Islam. So in Christianity, we call the Bible God's word, but it's not exactly the same, this saying it's, it's God's words. So that is the Quran has a has a very sacred nature and relationship to this quality. It is not chronological, so it's not a set of stories that people told. It's actually God speaking to Muhammad and then Muhammad writes down what God says. So that's one core difference that needs to be understood in terms of Islam. Now, I think one of the ways that Islam deals with suffering has to do with how people participate in relationship with God, especially in terms of intention. So intention and doing or performing within the religion is really, really critically important. So you don't just do an exercise, like a lot of people will talk about, we're just going to go to church because we're supposed to go to church. In Islam, it's really important when you're doing the what I'm going to tell you about, which are the five pillars, that you're actually doing them with the intention to worship God or to show God respect or to participate in the religion and the care of others, for instance, um, or in acting justice in some way. So the five pillars are, and this isn't in any particular order, uh, the profession of faith, so saying God is the one true God. We have pilgrimage, which is going to Mecca. And there are different rules around this of which I won't get into right now just to give you the brief overview. The idea of alm giving, which is helping those who are vulnerable. Also very important in terms of intention. We have the experience of fasting, especially during Ramadan. And we have the idea of prayer, which technically would happen five times a day. Some people do that, some people don't. Again, the expression might change, but the intention is really what's critically important. So within Islam, suffering does pose a threat to the theological system and actually poses some theologicalries that are often wrestled with. Uh, suffering is incomprehensible. However, it has to be dealt with. So it's not that it's denied, um, but it, but it does have to be negotiated. One of the ways that a Muslim would deal with suffering is to look at it through the perspective of the fact that this could be a test. So God is testing me to respond in certain ways. Again, this, this sort of leans back into the idea of I have this personal relationship with God. So if I'm being called to to test myself, then there has to be some purpose to this suffering, right? So suffering then becomes purposeful in some way. So this brings me to a point that I find really fascinating within Islam, which is to think about the medical field. And the idea of how then do we try to alleviate suffering? And one of the ways is to envision that the performance of alleviating suffering, say you're a medical doctor and you're trying to find a cure for an illness, just as an example, is, is this practice of finding the cure, the study, the knowledge, um, the experiments, all of those are ways to show your worshipping God. So your efforts to alleviating suffering through knowledge, for instance, are actually ways to show that that you honor God. Also, if we think about this in terms of the five pillars, prayer and pity are ways to also elucidate our respect or honor or or worship of God. And that is in itself a way to start to push against or alleviate human suffering. So I'll end with Protestant Christianity, and Protestant Christianity comes last in this chronological order that I have imposed upon the explanation of these religions. So Protestant Christianity, like I said before, its central symbol, we could consider being the cross without Jesus on it, which is indicating the concept of resurrection. Now, uh, Christianity is the umbrella over Protestantism and Catholicism, which means that they have shared themes, right? So I, this is my way of thinking through differences in, in these two religions is by looking at it through the lens of suffering. And what the central message then of a cross without Jesus on it is the resurrection, that Jesus saved us from our sins, or that God saved Jesus, or that Jesus arose from the dead, and now we have this symbol of salvation and redemption and resurrection in the cross without Jesus on it. So within Protestant Christianity, suffering does pose a threat to the theological system similar to the other Abrahamic religions. If we stick with this image of the resurrection is central, or the salvation of Christ and others is central. One of the things that we do to suffering then is that we look at it is being caused by a corrupt world. So that sense brings us back to the idea of suffering as an aberration, which is something that we want to end or get rid of. Uh, it's not something we want around, it's not something that we're going to easily accept. It has no value. So that's, that's where the Protestants sort of differ from the Roman Catholics. Now, I am finished with my summation, and if you are here still with me after watching all of that about religions, uh, I, one, I appreciate it. Second, hopefully it will help you understand what I think is really the principal behind this video, which is this. When we're raised with certain religious assumptions or within certain religious frameworks, we form evaluations and beliefs around suffering related to that upbringing. And I think it's really hard, unless, unless we completely divorce ourselves and do lots of therapy or lots of work around it, it's very hard to pull the religious influences of our early lives from the way that we negotiate pain and suffering and grief and mourning and tragedy and even trauma. Uh, the way we negotiate those things in our lives, it's still going to have some, um, reflection of the way that we were raised. So understanding where you are on that spectrum of the different religions, which isn't really a spectrum that chronological order, so to speak, can actually help you think about how you negotiate suffering and where, where the beliefs that you have about suffering come from.
