Psychology, Theology in Chrisitian Counseling Essay Example for Free

Psychology, Theology in Chrisitian Counseling Essay SUMMARY The book begins with at brief selection as it addresses the importance of the counselor utilizing the Christian faith in counseling in addition to focusing on the relationship between psychology and theology. It addresses the issues and concerns that religion may bring into counseling sessions and how the counselor should address and handle these challenges. McMinn addresses the facts that spiritual development must take place with the client as well as the counselor. The counselor must personally address the regulation of prayer, scripture, sin, confession, forgiveness, and redemption these formulations are a necessity for smooth sessions for the client and counselor. The objective of the sessions is to create a healthy sense of self for the client. Once this objective is achieved, the client can move from being broken, and begin a self-motivated and fulfilling relationship with God and others. In the section, Toward Psychological and Spiritual Health, McMinn focuses his main position to the varied individuality of an individual’s life. He proposes that Christian counseling strengthens three areas of a person’s life: sense of self, awareness of human need, limitations, and confiding interpersonal relationships with God and others. The book appears to be focused on the many important attributes of a Christian’s life i.e. prayer, scripture, sin, confession, forgiveness, and redemption all which should be the foundational make-up of the Christian counselor’s method of treating client’s. Dr. McMinn (1996) believes prayer should be used in and outside of the counseling session, however; with caution. According to McMinn (1996) Christian counselors should depend upon Scripture for truth by determining how to use it appropriately. The use of scripture should be utilized as a therapeutic intervention in the counseling setting. In addition, it would solely depend upon the client’s emotional, mental and spiritual health and how it is perceived. The chapters are formatted in a very straightforward layout. The chapters have sections to address the challenges counselors face, psychological and spiritual health focus points, and also expected results by each foundational element of counseling – psychological, theological, and spiritual. McMinn further discusses the topics of sin, redemption and forgiveness. From the text, it is apparent that the discussion of sin must be handled with care at all times. This subject should be approached with caution and only be discussed if there is a healthy client counselor relationship. Forgiveness is one of the other attributes discussed. Forgiveness has the ability to lead an individual to a healthy and fulfilling life with others and self. It can produce spiritual, mental and emotional reprieve for a client. Redemption is the sole objective for counseling and the counselor must first recognize his redemption before he is urged to be a vessel to redeem someone else. (Ephesians 1:7-8) In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of Gods grace 8that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (NIV) Christ’s redemption has freed us from guilt, being â€Å"justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus† (Romans 3:24). To be redeemed we first have to be lost, separated, and captive, be in slavery, and so on. In the case of the Christian redemption definition, we are separated from God and need redemption to be able to be reconcile back to God. CONCRETE RESPONSE This book is a very good outline of spiritual and psychological health and functioning. It gives a very detailed outline of what a Christian counselor should be. Having had some counseling sessions with my pastor in regards to debating on divorce, I was able to relate to McMinns outlines. My pastor was firm and consistent and did not waiver from the word of God as it related to my personal issue at the time. Before the sessions begin, one of the major items my pastor discussed with me was prayer. He asked before the sessions started if I would like for him to pray and before the end of each session. He advised me that through prayer I would be able to feel the presence of God in which I did. As I became more acclimated with my relationship with God, I was able to feel his presence. However; at some points during the sessions I felt as if he was forcing his personal beliefs on me as it related to divorce. I was at a point in my life that divorce appeared to be the only option I felt I had. With prayer and the act of forgiveness and continued efforts, I was able to forgive my spouse and move forward. After my sessions, I was able to find my healthy sense of self again which lead to a more positive, healthy and productive life with my spouse. REFLECTION The proficiency of counseling must be carefully implemented in order for the counselor and client to eventually envision and reap the benefits. This action may not happen in two or three sessions or may not happen at all depending upon the counselor and client’s relationship. We as Christian counselors must equip ourselves with the whole armor of God (Eph. 6:11, 13). The Holy Spirit should be in the midst of each counseling session in order for the sessions to be productive and prosperous. McMinn (1996) intra disciplinary approach to healing the emotional, mental, and spiritual life of man must be taken in small steps. One question that comes to mind is the section which related to counseling adolescents. According to the book, a teenager appears to be the most difficult to communicate with. In view of the fact that teenagers are faced with an array of complex situations on a daily basis, how would one effectively bring across information for a teenager to perceive who is currently going through a dilemma? Would the same outline be used in treating adults? ACTION As I read Mark McMinn’s book I began to feel a hunger and thirst for the Word of God which became more prevalent as I continued to read. My spirit began to search for more of God . It is apparent that I must fast, pray and read my bible on a daily basis so that I can focus on God and build a closer relationship with him. This book is an excellent resource for counseling for those who need guidance in incorporating spiritual disciplines in a secularly dominated society. The only way this will be instrumental in counseling is to refer to its teaching and allow the Holy Spirit to make it conducive and acceptable in the counseling session. Many Christian counselors can use this resource to reach a level of maturity that will translate into true healing and redemption. As a Christian Counselor, I must first recognize the fact that each person is different mentally, physically and emotionally. Therefore, different methods must be utilized. There is not an outline written in stone; each session evolves into a different method according to the client and the positive or negative response of the previous sessions. The information given by McMinn has truly broadened my outlook in respects to counseling and the relationship I should have with God in reference to becoming a counselor. I would truly recommend this book to any existing counselors or those perusing a counseling career. REFERENCE McMinn, Mark R. Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality In Christian Counseling. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1996.

Country of Origin Meat Labeling :: essays research papers

A large problem that has arose in our country is Country of Origin (COO) meat labeling. Imported meat is not labeled with its origin and has become a great problem because of the lack of universal packaging and processing laws. The United States imports meat from 26 foreign countries. This means when you buy a package of hamburger from your local grocery store it could contain meat from anywhere in the world. Other countries meat isn’t the same quality as US meat. Some meat comes from countries such as china where it is legal to feed livestock ground up bone meal from scraped animals. In which that bone meal can carry such diseases such as mad cow disease or a variety of other ailments. Other variances to US policy are things such as pesticides (rodent killer), insecticides (bug killer), and herbicides (weed killer). And when these poisons are used around livestock, they eat them also and are incorporated into the meat you buy at the supermarket. Furthermore, some foreign countries have no sanitation in the way livestock are produced. Some are grown on disease and urine infected water and food. So without labeling of meat origins, the consumer does not know what they are buying which should be immediately changed. The opposition to meat labeling laws claims it is â€Å"too much regulation and cost to gyrate through unnecessary protocols just to label the meat†. But obviously the opposition really has no defense and just doesn’t want their product to plummet once the truth is shown to the consumer. Once labels are applied to meat countries with notorious standards and unsanitary practices will be justly shut out of the market.

Modernism, Postmodernism

The youth culture of the 1960s represents the threshold between modernism and what, in most circles, passes for postmodernism. On the one hand, it is clearly an extension and reinvention of the historical avant-garde, and, on the other, it signals the increasing obsolescence of the (modernist) divide between elite and mass culture, between the artisanal and the mechanically reproduced.Reacting against the universalizing tendencies of high modernism (from abstract expressionism to the international style), and its dedication to seriousness, abstraction, and elegance, the new artists delighted in extending the range of art, in juxtaposing the exalted and the abject, the sacred and the profane, in being vernacular and relevant, and in rudely transgressing bourgeois norms.From the point of view of post-modern theory, the recent history of popular music can be seen to be marked by a trend towards the open and extensive mixing of styles and genres of music in very direct and self-conscious ways. Put very simply, the argument about the transition between modernism and postmodernism in pop music can be seen as the Beatles in the 1960s. The songs of the Beatles drew explicitly on diverse classical and popular forms and made a claim to what was for pop a new kind of musical and lyrical seriousness.Postmodernism first emerges out of a generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high modernism. The insistence on an absolute distinction between high and popular culture came to be regarded as the ‘unhip' assumption of an older generation. One sign of this collapse can be seen in the merging of art and pop music. For example, Peter Blake designed the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.Jameson (1991) distinguishes between modernist and post-modern pop music, making the argument that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones represent a modernist moment, against which punk rock and new wave can be seen as post-modern. In ‘Popular Mus ic and Postmodern Theory', Andrew Goodwin (1991) quite correctly argues that for various reasons this is a very difficult position to sustain. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are as different from each other as together they are different from, say, the Clash and Talking Heads. In fact, ‘it would be much easier to make an argument in which the distinction is made between the â€Å"artifice† of the Beatles and Talking Heads and the â€Å"authenticity† of the Rolling Stones and the Clash' (55).Perhaps the best way to think of the relationship between pop music and postmodernism is historically. In most accounts, the moment of postmodernism begins in the late 1950s-the same period as the emergence of pop music. Therefore, in terms of periodization, pop music and postmodernism are more or less simultaneous. This does not necessarily mean that all pop music is post-modern. Using Raymond Williams's model of social formations always consisting of a hierarchy of cultu res-‘dominant', 'emergent' and ‘residual'-post-modern pop music can be seen as 'emergent' in the 1960s with the late Beatles, and the rock music of the counter-culture, as principal examples, and in the 1970s with ‘art school' punk, to become in the late 1980s the ‘cultural dominant' of pop music.It is also possible to see the consumption of pop music and the surrounding pop music culture as in itself post-modern. Instead of an approach concerned with identifying and analysing the post-modern text or practice, we might look instead for postmodernism in the emergence of particular patterns of consumption; people who actively seek out and celebrate pastiche. The notion of a particular group of consumers, people who consume with irony and take pleasure in the weird, is very suggestive.Flirtations with Eastern mysticism in the 1960s brought new influences; the success of the Beatles, and George Harrison’s fascination with the Indian sitar, increased exposu re to Indian music and to Ravi Shankar, probably the first distinct ‘world musician’, unquestionably promoting musical sounds and structures quite different from those in the West. Prior to the successes of Miriam Makeba, Ravi Shankar and Manu Dibango, the first African musician to have an international hit, and whose music helped usher in the disco era (Mitchell 1996), musicians with exceptional local and regional popularity were otherwise largely unknown in the West, because their music was unfamiliar and inaccessible, and the words incomprehensible (hence Western recording companies took little interest).The Beatles’ quest for mysticism, enlightenment and innovative sounds (which could be incorporated in Western musical structures, rather than being given a life of their own) was the forerunner of other Western performers’ similar searches for authenticity and difference. Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986) recorded English lyrics over tracks performed by black South African bands and the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.As many critics noted, rock may have been the most popular and influential art form during the late '60s, â€Å"the deepest means of communication and expression† that negotiated the incompatibility of the post-modern with the preindustrial by attempting to unite â€Å"a mass culture† with â€Å"a genuine folk culture.† In the mid-Sixties, electricity, poetry, sex, and rhythm mixed with another combustible element, drugs, to create psychedelia. Baby boomer parents worshipped doctors and high medicine and avidly ingested antidepressants and other medications to achieve altered states of mental and physical health.Likewise, baby boomers' drug experimentation aimed for transport to a new personal and world consciousness that would eliminate human barriers— class, race, ideology—dividing their parents' world. By 1965, a suite of drugs coursed through the rock community. Dylan and marijuana influenced the Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965), a folk rock record of soft edges and personal introspection. Attracting a male following, The Who, the Mod heroes, thrashed through early singles such as â€Å"Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere† and â€Å"My Generation† with amphetamine-fed punk fury.Acid rock borrowed sounds, scales, chords, and rhythms from around the world to distort space and time. The Beatles adapted Indian ragas and modal jazz to dislodge the rhythmic anchor and erase the four cardinal directions. In England, the Beatles were introduced to acid in 1965; they recorded Revolver a year later. Their variable tape speeds, tape loops, backward guitar and voice lines, and other experiments transformed basic rock and roll chords, beats, and voices into a tableau of acid-soaked sound, rhythm, and poetry. Especially disorienting was â€Å"Tomorrow Never Knows,† an early trance-rock number. Ringo Starr's bass drum figure, a human heartbeat, kicked time in reverse, while John Lennon's filtered vocals, chants inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, seemed piped in from creation.In a key contribution, ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism', Jameson overviews postmodernism as the cultural expression of a new phase of capitalism, characterized by communications technologies facilitating the virtually instantaneous shifting of international capital, the emergence of new centres of capital (e.g. Japan) in a global economy, new class formations breaking with the traditional labour v. capital division, and a consumer capitalism which markets style, images and tastes as much as actual products. The commoditization of culture has resulted in a new populism of the mass media, a culture centred around the marketing and consumption of surfaces and appearances, epitomised by the ubiquity of commercial television.Despite its obvious plausibility as a general explanation of developments in popular culture, postmodernism su ffers from a number of difficulties. To heavily generalise, these are: its frequent lack of specificity; its overpreoccupation with texts and audiences at the expense of locating these within the economic and productive context within which cultural products reside; its reduction of history and politics and its ignoral of ‘traditional' sociological notions of production, class and ideology.The postmodernist view of rock music regards it as exemplifying the collapse of traditional distinctions between art and the commercial, the aesthetic and the unaesthetic, and the authentic and unauthentic. This view is most prominent in discussions of music video, with its affinities to advertising (Kaplan 1987). Popular cultural texts of the Beatles are regarded as dynamic not static, mediated both by patterns of economic and social organisation and the relationship of individuals and social groups to these patterns. This puts politics in a position of central importance, as culture is vie wed as a site of conflict and struggle, of negotiations which constantly confirm and redefine the existing conditions of domination and subordination in society.Against the backdrop of these cultural studies signposts, the construction of meaning in rock can be seen as embracing a number of factors: the music industry and its associated technologies, those who create the music, the nature of rock texts, the constitution of rock audiences and their modes of consumption, and attempts to influence and regulate all of these. The role of the music industry, in its drive to commodify rock and maximise profits, is the starting point for understanding rock.In film or in rock a certain historical logic can be reintroduced by the hypothesis that such newer media recapitulate the evolutionary stages or breaks between realism, modernism and postmodernism, in a compressed time span, such that the Beatles and the Stones occupy the high modernist moment embodied by the ‘auteurs' of 1950s and 1960s art films.Although animation was used in the early days of filmmaking and became just another form of studio production, it underwent big changes in the late twentieth century. A major break in such style occurred with the Beatles' animated film, Yellow Submarine (1968). Not only was the colour startling – a psychedelic experience of sorts, as some commented – but the animation also used a mixture of media that inspired what was later called the â€Å"blendo† style in which cels, cut-outs, clay figures – and more recently – computer graphics are blended (Cohen 1998).The application of postmodernism to popular music is primarily based on two perceived trends: firstly, the increasing evidence of pastiche, intertextuality, and eclecticism; and, secondly, increased cultural fusion and the collapsing of high-low culture type distinctions in rock. However, rock history demontrates that the first trend frequently actually reaffirms the distinctions supposedly being broken down in the second trend. Post-modern music clearly contributed to the increasingly global nature of cultural and economic linkages, mapping out new networks of commodity flow and entrepreneurial activity.At least at a surface level, all countries’ popular musics were shaped by international influences and institutions, by multinational capital and technology, by global pop norms and values. Even the most nationalist sounds—carefully cultivated ‘folk’ song, angry local dialect punk, preserved (for the tourist) traditional dance—were determined by a critique of international entertainment. The rise of rock ‘n’ roll, the success of the Beatles, alongside transitions in other cultural forms, ensured some measure of ubiquity.ReferencesCentore, F. F. (1991). Being and Becoming: A Critique of Post-Modernism, Greenwood Press: New York.Goodwin, Andrew. (1991). â€Å"Popular Music and Postmodern Theory†, Cultural Studies, 5.Jameson, Fredric (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Kaplan, E.A. (1987). Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture, New York: Methuen.Mitchell, T. (1996). Popular Music and Local Identity, Leicester University Press, London and New York.

Is Rain Water Clean and Safe to Drink

Have you ever wondered whether or not its safe to drink rainwater? The short answer is: sometimes. Heres a look at when its not safe to drink rainwater, when you can drink it, and what you can do to make it safer for human consumption. Key Takeaways: Can You Drink Rain? Most rain is perfectly safe to drink and may be even cleaner than the public water supply.Rainwater is only as clean as its container.Only rain that has fallen directly from the sky should be collected for drinking. It should not have touched plants or buildings.Boiling and filtering rainwater will make it even safer to drink. When You Shouldnt Drink Rain Water Rain passes through the atmosphere before falling to the ground, so it can pick up any contaminants in the air. You dont want to drink rain from hot radioactive sites, like Chernobyl or around Fukushima. Its not a great idea to drink rainwater falling near chemical plants or near the plumes of power plants, paper mills, etc. Dont drink rainwater that has run off of plants or buildings because you could pick up toxic chemicals from these surfaces. Similarly, dont collect rainwater from puddles or into dirty containers. Rain Water That Is Safe for Drinking Most rainwater is safe to drink. Actually, rainwater is the water supply for much of the worlds population.  The levels of pollution, pollen, mold, and other contaminants are low — possibly lower than your public drinking water supply. Keep in mind, rain does pick up low levels of bacteria as well as dust and occasional insect parts, so you may want to treat rainwater before drinking it. Making Rain Water Safer Two key steps you can take to improve the quality of rainwater are to boil it and filter it. Boiling the water will kill off pathogens. Filtration, such as through a home water filtration pitcher, will remove chemicals, dust, pollen, mold, and other contaminants. The other important consideration is how you collect rainwater. You can collect rainwater directly from the sky into a clean bucket or bowl. Ideally, use a disinfected  container or one that was run through a dishwasher. Let the rain water sit for at least an hour so heavy particulates can settle to the bottom. Alternatively, you can run the water through a coffee filter to remove debris.  Although it isnt necessary, refrigerating the rainwater will retard the growth of most microorganisms it could contain. What About Acid Rain? Most rainwater is naturally acidic, with an average pH of around 5.6, from the interaction between water and carbon dioxide in the air. This is not dangerous. In fact, drinking water rarely has a neutral pH because it contains dissolved minerals. Approved public water could be acidic, neutral, or basic, depending on the source of the water. To put the pH into perspective, coffee made with neutral water has a pH around 5. Orange juice has a pH closer to 4. The truly acidic rain that you would avoid drinking might fall around an active volcano. Otherwise, acid rain isnt a serious consideration. Sources Joan D. Willey; Bennett; Williams; Denne; Kornegay; Perlotto; Moore (January 1988). Effect of storm type on rainwater composition in southeastern North Carolina. Environmental Science Technology. 22 (1): 41–46. doi:10.1021/es00166a003Joan D. Willey; Kieber; Avery (2006-08-19). Changing Chemical Composition of Precipitation in Wilmington, North Carolina, U.S.A.: Implications for the Continental U.S.A. Environmental Science Technology. 40 (18): 5675–5680. doi:10.1021/es060638wS. I. Efe; F. E. Ogban; M. J. Horsfall; E. E. Akporhonor (2005). Seasonal Variations of Physico-chemical Characteristics in Water Resources Quality in Western Niger Delta Region, Nigeria (PDF). Journal of Applied Scientific Environmental Management. 9 (1): 191–195.