SIGNIFICANT LIFE EXPERIENCE G3.3 Flashcards
Significant Life Experience (SLE)
- Dramatic / intense / powerful event
- Turning point that evokes change in person’s beliefs, practise and faith → transformative
- It has informed, reinforced or changed the person’s understanding and expression of the meaning of their religious beliefs. This occurs through questioning and reassessment, examination and reflection
- Life altering
- Change can be positive or negative
Types of experiences
Joy, wonder, suffering, major life choices, love
Joy
→ The delight, pleasure, happiness and even elation that can be found in an experience or a relationship.
→ Joy can give purpose to ones life (answers to big q)
→ It may emerge from difficult situations
→ Some people may find fulfilment in bringing joy to others
→ Religious acts of devotion assist adherents to experience joy
→ Experience of joy can strengthen a person’s beliefs
→ Can strengthen belief as it provides evidence of UR
Examples → birth, baptism, bar/bat mitzvah, graduation, marriage
Wonder
→ An individual struck with astonishment, awe and admiration
→ Can be derived from a discovery from within oneself or through a new understanding resulting from a SLE
→ Arise from experiences that have an anticipated or unexpected impact on a person’s feelings, beliefs and spirituality
→ Can strengthen understanding of UR
Examples → marvel at the birth of new life, rituals, worship, music, festivals
Suffering
→ The experience of physical, mental, emotional or spiritual anguish
→ Suffering can be inflicted by external forces beyond an individual’s control
→ Suffering can also be inflicted by people upon each other, either individually or communally
→ Lead people to question religious beliefs and experience a weakening of them or even a loss of faith. Other people can find affirmation and a strengthening of their beliefs, leading to a renewed spirituality and greater commitment to their faith
→ Can raise q, reject beliefs
Examples → external: natural disaster, individual or loved one contracting an incurable illness
Examples → internal: wars, political suppression, economic deprivation, bullying, neglect
Major life choices
→ Daily choices may seem insignificant in the scheme of things but can have far reaching implications for future relationships, faith, career or life story
→ Sometimes these implications are only revealed in hindsight, while at other times we are forced to make difficult decisions that cause heartache and soul searching
→ Sometimes religious beliefs will offer guidance, while it may make others to question their faith
Examples → deciding to have a child, finding new job, moving countries
Love
→ Feeling affection, displaying passion and adoration or being devoted to another
→ It may not always be reciprocated
→ The capacity to love brings people closer to one another, physically and emotionally
→ In religious traditions, love extends to our relationship with the ultimate reality
→ For adherents, their love of God or their ethical values distinctly direct them to show love for all humanity, even in the least loveable
Examples → partner, child, ultimate reality
SLE in SFM
- Confirming the answers to the questions which therefore reaffirms purpose and meaning in one’s life
- Can enhance understanding of existence
- Can undermine one’s perception/ understanding of existence
- Can destroy one’s perception/ understanding of existence
- Raising the questions with no answers
Belief
- Ideas
- Statements
- Ideology
- Teachings of the religion
- Product of the mind
- Believing the belief → accepts as true, based on the teachings of the religion, educated by leaders or family
Faith
- Acceptance of religious beliefs
- Complete trust, confidence in, accepted of, commitment
- Engage in expressions
- Reliance, dependence on
- Product of spirit, heart
- Implies devotion, internalised, emotional connection
- Deeper, stronger than believing in belief
- Level of personal intensity/ meaning of faith may vary greatly
Faith in belief → conscious choice, commitment, trust
Belief and faith
→ Belief is truth held in the mind; faith is in the heart (complete trust, confidence and devotion)
→ Beliefs are statements and ideas accepted as true by the religious tradition. Whereas faith is more personal
and having confidence in the beliefs and relying on them
Adherence to (belief)
→ relates the degree to which beliefs are lived out in a person’s life
→ follow accept beliefs, daily life
→ May show public display of acceptance of religious beliefs such as: wearing of religious garments, symbols, participating in actions, being present at rituals.
→ People who adhere to religious beliefs may vary greatly in level of faith
→ Engagement with expression in rituals may be at a superficial level-a public display to fit in with a community, at a social level though through a religious ceremony.
Understanding of
→ relates to the teaching/ meaning/interpretation of the beliefs
→ make sense of the belief in the contexts of one’s life
- May be very basic with little or no understanding right through to a highly academic analysis of the subtlety of beliefs and their connections
- Understanding of religious beliefs may be restricted or encouraged by family, village or country historical context, authority of structures of the religion/or the wider society, scientific, philosophical and theological developments
Engagement with (expression)
→ represents the level of commitment or devotion to religious beliefs through practice
→ deep commitment and devotion to expression
May involve:
- Participating in regular rituals - private and communal
- Having religious artefacts in homes
- Wearing religious symbols
- Reading, studying and meditating on texts
- Applying ethical principles and moral values to human behaviour
- Complying with the social structure and expectations of the tradition
Significant life experience → beliefs, expressions, faith
- Disorientation. Confusion
- Weaken - change
- Strengthen - reinforce
- Reinterpretation - inform
