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Thomas Peer 1
Does religion help people cope? If so, in what ways?
Yes, religion does help us to cope with personal and world issues that we find too overwhelming for us to contend with. Having a connection to God strengthens our faith and gives us hope for the best outcome. The article expressed that having a strong religious connection produces a more positive outcome as well as helps us to cope with world issues (Zukerman & Korn, 2013). The Human Genome Project can be helpful in the early detection of illnesses in humans that could be useful in the treatment of future generations. In my opinion, I believe that early detection of certain health issues in my parents and grandparents could have helped to guide my health into a more positive future. The men in my family have all started to develop health issues in their early 50s, this information could have been useful in my teenage and young adult years for me to avoid certain unhealthy lifestyles to have better health in my 50s. Adult development starts early in life and having more information about our genomes will be very helpful in knowing the best path to take to secure a more positive future.
Reference
Zukerman, G., & Korn, L. (2013). Post-traumatic stress and world assumptions: The effects of religious coping.
Journal of Religion and Health,
53(6), 1676–1690.
James Peer 2
Coping
The role of religion in coping is different for everyone, but I know in my own experience it seems like there is something innate about asking for help from a higher power in times of distress. Of course this claim lacks clear evidence, but I have gone back and forth in my faith in different stages of life and have found myself asking God for help even when I was cognitively opposed to the idea. My Christian upbringing may suggest that I am conditioned to believe that asking for help from God is a productive request, but even so, I am grateful for these moments because it helps me provide a rebuttal to those who think Christianity is just a coping mechanism.
Research Article
In a meta-analysis of the literature relating to psychological adjustment and religious coping, Ano and Vasconcelles (2005) attempted to find meaningful correlations related to the type of coping strategy and psychological well-being. Though their study had good intentions, I found the design and the meaning of their study to be vague and relatively ineffective. After coding 49 different studies over the years related to religious coping and well-being, they classified positive coping and negative coping of a religious nature as well as the positive and negative outcomes that could come from a stressful event. Positive coping included things like forgiveness, direction, and helping whereas negative coping was operationalized to include discontent, demonic reappraisal, and passive religious deferral. Their findings supported the first hypothesis that positive coping is positively correlated with good psychological well-being and also supported the second hypothesis relating to positive coping and its impact on mitigating negative outcomes such as anxiety and depression (Ano & Vasconcelles, 2005). I find these results to be weak and ineffective because of the great variability in how these studies attempted to quantify coping and well-being. First, most reports are a product of self-report surveys whose subjectivity would affect both the participants who use religious coping as well as those who are opposed to it. An atheist or agnostic will certainly rank religious practices as unimportant in the same way a believer might rank them superficially high. What clouds the results even more is the inclusion of more than just the Christian faith. Each individual’s perception of religious practices could be very different adding to the subjective nature of the results. In the end, the data does not capture the complicated nature of people who might ask God for help who don’t claim religion and those who claim to be religious who do nothing. With that being said, the purpose of the meta-analysis had good intentions to highlight the importance of religion in people’s daily lives and the potential to explore that avenue in therapy sessions.
Human Genome
The human genome project was a monumental achievement that has uncovered the complicated nature of genetics and how they relate to a number of health issues and disorders (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2023). Understanding the genetic code of humans and the correlations related to specific genes has helped doctors identify those at risk for life threatening diseases as well as helped those with a variety of infertility issues. My wife and I were fortunate enough to learn of issues related to our genetic makeup as we tried to start our family. The genome project essentially made genetic testing possible to allow individuals and their loved ones to be aware of potentially life altering circumstances. I do not want to doubt the power of prayer but when there’s a genetic reason that keeps you from starting the family that you want, the need for science and research becomes clear. I am thankful that genetic testing has advanced as far as it has for this reason but also for the many others that now have the ability to know what health or psychological issues they might face in life.
References
Ano, G. G., & Vasconcelles, E. B. (2005). Religious coping and psychological adjustment to stress: A meta-analysis.
Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(4), 461-480.
to an external site.
Cavanaugh, J. C., & Blanchard-Fields, F. (2023).
Adult Development and Aging (8th ed.). Cengage Learning
