Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Religion, MA

First Advisor

Laurentiu Mot

Second Advisor

Zoltan Szalos-Farkas

Abstract

Problem

When someone is bereaved, friends, comforters and sympathisers at times try to make sense of the situation. Some people theoretically deal with issues surrounding the death of someone and grief of the surviving ones without any personal experience of these events. Hypothetical and imaginative reasoning in comforting other people is insufficient for making a real impact and a significant and lasting difference to the bereaved. The current study was to try to identify the most effective way to help and console people who have lost their loved ones.

Method

The process of collecting data for this thesis was online libraries which provided hundreds of books and commentaries about the subject of grief and comforting. Data from books, journals, documentaries, videos and articles online was used to analyse the attitudes, behaviour and experiences of people in grief and their comforters.

Results

Based on the data used, plus the circumstances around Job and his friends, my findings were that the best method of comforting was silence and a limitation and narrowing of speech by the comforters.

Conclusions

Comforters should pay attention to what the bereaved have to say, but yet should not attempt to give advice on how to grieve or about circumstances surrounding dying. Empathy from comforters can be a very helpful balm to the bereaved.

Subject Area

Grief--Religious aspects; Bereavement; Loss (Psychology)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/theses/118/

Download

Share

COinS