The Integration of the Spirit

The Integration of the Spirit

"God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27 New International Version).

When God created man and woman, he created them in totality with a mind or spirit so that they could know God, a heart or emotions so that they could love God, and He provided a will with freedom of choice so they could obey God. Just as God also has a mind, and a heart, and a will, God placed these in the soul of mankind. God created man and woman in his image, but since the beginning, his people have had this reversed creating God in their own image of what they believed God should be. Instead of exalting God, individuals have continued to exalt themselves.

Introduction

The hypothetical backdrop of this theory on personality has integrated the spiritual connectivity with man's basic mind, body, and soul in a holistic approach. Expanding the proponent's of both Beck's and Bandura's cognitive-behavioral theory, the conceptualization of man's spirit and soul created by God is believed to be very important criteria in his well-being. The explanation of human behavior combined the cognitive, biological, social, and spiritual determinants in the process of continuous reciprocal interactions between all four concepts. Balancing the interactions between one's self and all the four concepts facilitated a conceptual model of personality development, which is called the biopsychosocial-spiritual model.

History

The integration of man's spirit has a long history of debate and controversy by philosophers, psychologists, and medical science. Dating back to Socrates, the healer of the soul, he believed that he survived the ravages of the war in his youth to be set apart by God for his "soul-care dialogue" (Brauerman, 2012). This was 2500 years before the making of the "talking cure" postulated by Sigmund Freud.

The concept of the soul was considered the backbone in the characteristics of understanding man and his behavior until the early twentieth century (Hagedorn & Moorhead, 2010). Pascal, a seventeenth century philosopher, physicist, and mathematician believed that the human soul was creatively created for man's connection with God. He described mankind's soul as a God-shaped hole or vacuum that could only be fulfilled with the love, compassion, and wholeness of God.

Theorists and philosophers in their theories of personality and behavior of individuals began to detour from unobservable behaviors in favor of more evidence-based data until the late 1980's (Hagedorn & Moorhead, 2010). A resurgence was seen in the interest of the soul as an important criteria in the make-up of people along with it's care and interest in spirituality as a reaction to materialism, however it was also seen as a reaction to mainstream religion, particularly Christianity with it's New Age practices of chanting, channeling, and reflections on the will of man rather than the will of God.

Man's Spiritual Disconnection

The spirit of man has been described as the God-consciousness that knows the voice of God, hears the voice of God, and has fellowship with God (Nee, n.d.). The disconnection or death of this spirit occurred in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by the exaltation of their own souls rather than God's obedience. "The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:16, 17). Not a physical death, but a spiritual death occurred that day and has continued for all mankind.

Victor Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, which was written while Frankl was in a Nazi concentration camp stated that man's primary vision in life is the motivation to search for a meaningful life (2006). Frankl proposed that man is ultimately self-determined and could choose religion or agnostics and his decisions were based by the expression of the environment he created for himself and not by the actual environment.

Man's Search

Man's search for meaning and fulfillment has continued for over two thousand years. Seeking an inner fulfillment of peace and contentment, man searches outwardly in relationships, careers, addictions, and even religious pursuits to fill the God-shaped vacuum that Pascal described (Hagedorn & Moorhead, 2010). The paradox lies in the search for outward connections