Spiritual Struggle and Coping among Christians Author:Ping-Hwa Chen, Lin-Lin Cheng, Lan-Hsin Fan, Ya-Ting Juang
Research Article
The purpose of the study was to explore the spiritual coping process and the outcomes for those Taiwanese Christians who encountered spiritual struggles. The present study interviewed 17 research participants (13 were females and 4 were males, 14 were Christians and 3 were Catholics; the age ranged from 24-58, and the mean age was 42.06). They all encountered major life events in past five years and experienced the spiritual struggles. The grounded theory method was adopted to analyze the data. The study found that psycho-spiritual attribution, the experience of experiencing God, the use of spiritual and non-spiritual resources, and the spiritual coping response were all important to the spiritual coping process. It was also found that all research participants showed the change and growth in relations to God, self, and others after the spiritual struggle and coping. The discussions and conclusions were addressed in the end.