Personal and spiritual beliefs

by | Sep 6, 2021 | Religion and theology

Examining your personal and spiritual beliefs is necessary throughout your career as a counselor. The purpose
of self-reflection is to help counselors gain an understanding of their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions
so that they do not impose their beliefs on clients. This assignment will help you gain insight into your beliefs
and to help to identify alliance or conflict with the ACA Code of Ethics. Learning how to work through any
conflict because of your beliefs is important not to harm your client or violate ethical standards. This
assignment allows you to examine and apply steps to address the conflict.
INSTRUCTIONS
You will complete a self-reflective paper between your personal or spiritual beliefs and the counseling
professional values as depicted in the ACA Code of Ethics (available from
https://www.counseling.org/resources/aca-code-of-ethics.pdf). The paper should be 3–4 pages in length, APA
format, and include at least two references. The two required references are: Daniel (2020) and ACA Code of
Ethics (2014). Additional references are permitted, but not necessary.
This is a self-reflective paper and should be written in first person. However, please make sure that your style
remains professional. This is not texting, emailing, or FaceTime.
• Verify in one sentence that you read the Daniel (2020) text in its entirety.
• Choose two counseling professional values or codes from the ACA Code of Ethics that are in harmony with
your personal or spiritual beliefs. Do not choose obvious values, but values that maybe were not in harmony
until you progressed in this program or read Daniel’s text. Using the heading: Harmony Between Professional
Values and Spiritual Beliefs, write up to one page explaining the harmony between the professional values and
your spiritual beliefs.
• Using the heading: Integrating Professional Values and Spiritual Beliefs, write up to one page explaining how
these values and your spiritual beliefs came into harmony. What was this process for you? How were you
challenged to integrate the values and your beliefs? How did Daniel’s text challenge your thinking?
• Choose 2 counseling professional values or codes from the ACA Code of Ethics that still remain in conflict
with your personal or spiritual beliefs. Using the heading: Conflict Between Professional Values and Spiritual
Beliefs, write up to one page explaining the conflict that you still have to work through.
• Using the heading: Actions to Work Through the Conflicts, write up to one page reflecting on how you should
work through these conflicts and what this process should entail.

Sample Solution

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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