Health care provider and faith diversity
Nurses usually encounter all manner of challenges in their practice in health clinics and hospitals. All manner of people raging from religion to cultural diversity come daily to health centers to receive diagnosis and treatment as well. Narrowing down to religion diversity, nurses ought to equip themselves with knowledge and understanding that appertains to religion so that they can offer services effectively. The following is a research on three of them and how it affects nursing professionals.
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion whose origin is India but religion research has shown that this religion is growing in the Western worlds, which include Europe and United States of America (Sullivan et al, 2010), with more than three million followers worldwide. The founder of Buddhism is believed to have gone for a long journey of clarification and so the followers also are expected follow suit. Those who follow this religion believes that god cannot be personalized and that everything in the world not constant (BBC, 2009).
It is believed that Buddha was born in royalty more than 2000 years ago and therefore enjoyed all manner of pleasure. This was short leaved by his encounter with a person who was living in poverty and therefore decided to identify with this group. He resulted to solitude and silence, and in this meditation, he was enlightened (BBC, 2009). It can therefore be argued that Buddhism is a religion that focuses mainly on self searching and deep intra-reflections of life and its challenges, and how this can be addressed once and for all.
Suffering in Buddhism
Pain and suffering are fundamental factors in Buddhism that contributed to the formation of this religion (Dessein, 2011). This is an indication that suffering is a major doctrine that is widely taught in this religion. As a result, Buddha saw the importance of addressing this problem of suffering and thus increased followership. Common sense will therefore dictate that the people who followed Buddha’s footsteps eventually became the followers of this religion that has been rampant in India. Since suffering is inevitable, Buddha’s approach was to look for a long lasting solution to end human suffering, diseases and sicknesses being presumed to be part of these diverse sufferings.
Sikhism
Unlike Buddhism which was founded more than 2000 years ago, Sikhism has been in existences for a period of 500 years, enjoys a membership of twenty million and above from all over the world. It is observed that this religion believes in the existence of only one God, who should be worshipped with the deepest devotion demonstrated in the way of life of the followers (Chilana, 2005). What is the meaning of the word Sikh? It simply means a follower or a student of God who strictly follows the instructions of Sri Sikh Gurus (Murphy, 2007).
Beliefs
All Sikhs across the world believe in the deity of one God who is served by all people of the world irrespective of which religion they come from. Brar (2011) observes that one of the ways in which Sikhs ought to express their worship to God is through virtuous and truthful living while avoiding sins and inducement into sin. It is also submitted that Sikhism preaches the equality message in that people from all races, religion and sex, people are equal in the eyes of God. In other words, men and women are all equal before God and therefore this must be respected at all times.
Development of faith in God
The main activity that is much emphasized in this religion is the ability to develop faith in God and experiencing him as well. They therefore rely on how God has created the universe to build a stronger relationship with God. This resilience is attained when an individual is able to meditate about God, living a life of honesty and being involved in charitable deeds. It is therefore the duty of every Sikh to develop a personal relationship with God as well as members of Sikh community. It is also the duty of every Sikh to serve people because of the belief that serving people is equivalent to serving God. This can explain the devotion and discipline they usually exhibit in their businesses and companies.
Hinduism
Hinduism is considered to be the oldest living religion in the world which takes pleasure in its 900 million membership or followers. While there are several commonalities with other related religion like Sikhism, Hinduism differs to some extent because it does not have a founder, scriptures or a common statement of belief. It is important to note that most of the Hindus believe in a God who is supreme and can be represented in other forms of divinity originating from God himself.
Concepts
Hinduism revolves around several concepts of which three will be discussed. The concept of the eternal self which has various interpretations, but the best suited interpretation is eternal self as a servant of God. In other words, it inclines more towards spiritual aspect of a human being than the material being. The other concept deals with the whole duty of a man. It is argued that this is the reason as to why any society exists and therefore, the need to have moral values or virtuous society is emphasized in this concept. The main challenge with this concept is the various interpretations of meaning by different people, while on the other hand, it provide opportunities for service to humanity as well as to God. The last concept is the correlation between Brahman and God, where the former refers to magnificent power beyond the universe or the power that hold up the entire universe (Nicholson, 2007). God on the other hand is seen as the absolute being that is able to bring into being, keep going and tear down the universe. One interesting thing about approaching God is that you can approach him in any way, for instance, as a parent figure, a child, a woman, just to mention a few.
Correlation between Christianity and the three religions
All the three religions discussed above correlates with Christianity in one major area which is service to one supreme God. However, the means in which this God is worshipped is totally different. For instance, most Christians will consider prayer and fasting as a serious discipline to observe in their journey of faith but this is not considered as an act of worship in Sikhism. In addition, most Christians believe that God cannot be equated with anything in the world but Hinduism religion allows the followers to relate with God in a way that is pleasing to them.
Christianity is a religion that revolves around living holy and pleasing lives to God and also believes in eternity. This concurs with the three above only to the extent of living holy lives but they do not go beyond life after death. In my personal view, more light has to be shed in some of the areas that have been highlighted above. The three religions are mum on what happens after they please their god and what rewards they will attract when they die. However, this outcome can be influenced by the biasness due to the fact that I am a Christian by default.
Providing healthcare in diversity of faith
A Buddhist aims at putting to end all human suffering, likewise, Christians believe that God is able to keep them from suffering through His son Jesus Christ. Considering these two views, it indicates that spirituality can be related to physical and soul healing. For instance, Christian’s faith allows people to be prayed for healing and restoration and in most cases; those who are healed are given an opportunity to testify of what God has done. For Christians, prayer brings healing. For a Buddhist, soul searching and meditation is what brings healing. For a Hindu, giving back to the community and involvement in charity work is what bring about healing.
Therefore in providing health care to people with varying faith, what matters most is respect for the faith and appreciation that there are things that a person may not do because of the professed faith. When this is achieved, people with varying faiths will feel secure and may desire to learn more about other faiths. Jesus exhibited these characters in that he was able to relate with the rich and the poor and as a result, his ministry was very effective. Healthcare providers must then adopt such principles in their healthcare provision so that every individual who comes to the hospital will feel that his religious and faith beliefs are not violated.
Lesson Learnt
People’s faith must be respected regardless of which religion they come from. Since their faith is not in a vacuum, it is important to provide services to people, starting point being their faith. It is after this respect that a health care provider can evangelize about the personal faith without compelling the other to shift from one faith to another.
References
BBC. (2009, November 17th). Buddhist at a glance. Retrieved August 2nd, 2013, from BBC – Religions: http://www.bbc.co.uk
Brar, S. (2011). Introduction. Retrieved August 2nd , 2013, from Sikhs.org: http://www.sikhs.org/summary.
Chilana, R. (2005). Sikhism: Building a basic collection on Sikh religion and culture. The alert collector , 108-116.
Dessein, B. (2011). Time, Temporality, and the characteristic marks of the conditioned: Sarvastivada and Madhyamaka Buddhist Interpretations. Asian Philosophy , 341-360.
Murphy, A. (2007). History in the Sikh past. History and Theory , 345-365.
Nicholson, H. (2007). Two apologetic Moments in Sankara’s concept of Brahman. The Journal of Religion , 528-555.
Sullivan, B. e. (2010). The Buddhist health study: meditation on Love and Compassion as features of Religious Practice. Crosscurrents , 185-207.
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