Christian Worldview And Counseling Ethics

ETHICS PAPER

How my personal life interacts with counseling ethics The ethics codes that govern how a counselor should conduct themselves both personally and professionally may drastically change an individual’s lifestyle after obtaining their license. For some it may be a culture shock as they learn to adjust to an entirely different way of interacting with people. For others, it may be simply more of the same. That is, they may have already been adhering to a higher form of interpersonal relationships and unknowingly following many of the guidelines and mandates put forth by ethics codes. This may be due to a strong Christian upbringing that projects durable morals and resilient beliefs or it may be due to an intrinsic moral compass.

Because one is faith-based and the other secular-based the former provides an overall view of where we are spiritually and the latter only where we are temporally. Both seek to define who we are as persons, but again the former expresses our meaningfulness as physical and spiritual creatures whereas the latter only delineates who we are as professionals working within the helping

Christian’s recognize that “For by grace we have been saved through faith; and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2: 8-9, NASB); whereas professional ethics believe that a code of ethics will solve man’s problems; however, “making moral decisions is always a terribly confusing thing—to someone without principles” (Kreeft, 1990, p. 29). Professional ethics may be portrayed as laws because some state what can and cannot be done but in actuality they are merely heavily weighted values because “Laws are objectively real; they come from above us and command us. Values…come from us; laws come to us. We invent values, but we are under laws (Kreeft, 1990, p. 28). As long as man abides by man’s law and disregards His law professional ethics can only prevent those with a moral