Seeking Coherence in Suffering: Studying Theodicy as Medical Students
Michael Lee; Joseph Elkins; Giorgia Maghelli; and Richard Rice, PhD, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda CA
Learning to communicate empathetically with suffering patients is a critically important skill for medical professionals. In the face of suffering, patients may ask providers to engage in conversations relating to significance and meaning (such as, “why is this happening to me?”). Medical professionals are also confronted with making sense of suffering on a personal level as they engage in such conversations and/or bear witness to the suffering of their patients.
Physicians who believe in God grapple with the added tensions between a personal belief in divine attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, and the lived reality of profound human suffering (what philosophers and theologians call "the problem of evil").
At Loma Linda University, a Christian health sciences university in Southern California, all medical students take a class on Christian theodicy (“God and Human Suffering”) as a part of their training. In this class, students read the book Suffering and the Search for Meaning (IVP Academic) written by Dr. Richard Rice, which provides an overview of seven different Christian theodicies. In this panel, three dual-degree students (working towards an MD as well as towards an MA in Religion and Society) at Loma Linda University respond to the book from different theological perspectives, ranging from Reformed to Arminian, as they reflect on the liminal space between academic theological reflection and their lived experience of encounter with suffering patients in the hospital. In addition, Professor Rice, the author of the textbook, will respond to the student reflections and share his experiences teaching theodicy to medical students.
Physicians who believe in God grapple with the added tensions between a personal belief in divine attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, and the lived reality of profound human suffering (what philosophers and theologians call "the problem of evil").
At Loma Linda University, a Christian health sciences university in Southern California, all medical students take a class on Christian theodicy (“God and Human Suffering”) as a part of their training. In this class, students read the book Suffering and the Search for Meaning (IVP Academic) written by Dr. Richard Rice, which provides an overview of seven different Christian theodicies. In this panel, three dual-degree students (working towards an MD as well as towards an MA in Religion and Society) at Loma Linda University respond to the book from different theological perspectives, ranging from Reformed to Arminian, as they reflect on the liminal space between academic theological reflection and their lived experience of encounter with suffering patients in the hospital. In addition, Professor Rice, the author of the textbook, will respond to the student reflections and share his experiences teaching theodicy to medical students.