Psychospiritual Perspective of Violence
As a positive psychology and spiritual well-being practitioner, I have been concerned with my clients’ and students’ well-being. I have seen clients face spiritual struggles such as dealing with religious conflict in personal interactions, the crisis of faith, dealing with conflicting religious views and values, inability to reconcile with personal faith, and lack of connection with one’s faith community. Misrepresentation of religious beliefs by other members of the faith community leads to confusion and spiritual struggle that causes inner conflict.
Coping Mechanism
Religion and spirituality serve as coping mechanisms for those who seek comfort in religious practices. They turn towards prayers when facing stress, personal conflict, or national disaster. Therefore, religious practices are intertwined with faith and spirituality. For faith-based clients seeking professional help, it is a disservice to ignore the spiritual aspect of his/her life since the faith community serves as a source of strength and help in resolving difficult issues that the client may be facing psychologically.
Every belief that we form, philosophy, or rituals that we follow or choose not to follow, contributes to the psychological makeup and well-being. The formation of the individual’s thought pattern, psyche, behavior, and attitude contribute to our positive and negative view of religion and life itself since physical existence is intertwined with our spiritual life. It is interconnected on a deeper level than we care to acknowledge.
Sometimes, religion is to be blamed for political violence even though the motivation is political and not religious at all. Religion is only a piece of a puzzle, along with various social issues that contribute to violence in society. Violence is not limited to one race, culture, or belief system. We need to look at the larger picture from various perspectives. So far, we have analyzed violence from a psychosocial perspective but let’s look at it through a spiritual perspective for the root cause of human behavior. Because there is an assumption that religious associations and practices give rise to violent behavior and some even believe that nothing good can come out of religious associations.
Educating Soul:
We have seen images of the horror of war, ethnic cleansing, and violence in the name of religion and nationality. War and violence are human problems that are deeply rooted within the human soul and psyche; thus, it is a spiritual problem. There is no limit to human misery and pain inflicted by child abuse, social-emotional abuse to genocide.
The root cause of all such pain is sickness found within the human soul that leads to destructive human behavior such as prejudice, anger, racism, social injustice, hatred, racial and ethnic superiority, and discrimination. All these spiritual illnesses are associated with egoism because we have separated spirituality from all fields of life. whether it is education, family and marriage, relationship issues, therapy, or psychology. There is no place for spirituality in modern-day society. Our education system lacks soulful education that makes us better human beings. We prepare students for the job market, but we do not address moral issues that corrupt the human soul. It is important to bring back souls in the fields of education, psychology, psychotherapy, counseling, or sociology. As mentioned by the famous philosopher, Aristotle, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
Gary J. Acquaviva, a former student of Robert S. Hartman, shared his knowledge about violence. He said, “In our world, television and other media market violence as entertainment in such quantities that it overflows into the real world. With today’s mind-shaping technology, dehumanization can be accomplished more quickly and efficiently” (p.17). Dehumanization occurs, according to Acquaviva, when people are desensitized to intrinsic worth, their own and that of other people. Insensitivity to the intrinsic worth of individual human beings is the taproot from which violence emerges and grows. Its more immediate causes are also its self-perpetuating effects — socially pervasive egoism, sensualistic hedonism, callousness, vulgarity in words and deeds, the glorification of the vices as virtues, religious intolerance, bigotry of all descriptions, and so on. Our pop culture exalts as heroes and role models those who conspicuously act out the traditional seven cardinal vices or sins: pride, anger, gluttony, lust, covetousness, envy, and sloth or laziness.
Spiritual Psychology
According to the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, in the context of Islam, scripture addresses and brings attention to the issues of violence, injustice, intolerance, racial superiority, and oppression rather than promoting violence. Quranic verses address inner conflicts, social injustice, and lack of tolerance as spiritual problem that manifests in society. Such issues need to be addressed and egoistic tendencies should be eradicated through self-regulation and autonomy. Adults should be morally and spiritually responsible for the choices they make in their personal lives, but it is a responsibility we as human beings are neglecting.
Holy books have pointed out that humanity is heading towards the path of self-destruction, which is why we should strive to eradicate destructive egoistic tendencies and replace them with constructive habits, healthy beliefs, values, and high moral character which manifest collectively in a healthy society.
