Worldview Questions and Answers Wk 2

Worldview Questions and Answers – Week 2 As we begin this second week of COUN 506 we are going to concentrate on building models for integration in counseling. Our beginning point in this is to understand more specifically how OUR worldview impacts the models that we use in counseling. The way we interpret behavior has a lot to do with our worldview, and a lot to do with our expectations of our clients. One of the first steps in applying worldview questions to counseling is that we have to begin to think in terms of the bigger questions that are involved, starting off with: “Who am I?” Those who approach the question of human nature from a theological perspective think of people as created in the image of God. The focus of those who are theologically-trained and oriented is the belief in people being a free creation imbued with a free will, but also as fallen beings created for a purpose. This is true even when we see a person in a counseling situation and it is clear by the problems they are having or created for themselves that they are far from achieving the purpose for which they were created. It does not remove the fact that this is a person with a purpose for which they are created. From a psychological standpoint the question ”Who Am I?” raises the issue of rationality; the idea of humans as essentially “a self,” not a creation but a rational self. Some theories of psychology stresses that when people begin their lives, they begin as “blank slates” where from the moment they are born, their experiences, their environment, and their relationships begin to fill the “pages” of their mind and lives. So there is a sense in psychology that people are akin to “self-creating social organisms” that interact with people and systems around them. From the perspective of Christian spirituality, identity questions are phrased in terms of the spirit, in terms of the God-breathed life. Recall the image in Genesis where God forms Adam from