Michael Kim Zapf's Article: The Spiritual Dimension Of Person And Environment
967 Words4 Pages
The article, “The Spiritual Dimension of Person and Environment”, written by Michael Kim Zapf focuses on just that, the spiritual aspects or lack thereof in the professional field of social work. Before being able to discuss the object the author had in writing this article, it is important to know what the word spiritual means. According to the oxford living dictionary spiritual means, “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things”. Zapf’s main point is how most in the western culture separate self from the environment and how that incorrect view of life is negatively impacting not only social work but the daily lives of people.
At the start of his article, Zapf starts by discussing social work and the role that spirituality and religion have has in the profession. Spoiler alert, it is practically a nonexistent relationship between those two topics and social work or other mainly government ran helping professions. He goes on to explain the western view of spirituality and how that is actually hurting professions such as social work. In the efforts to respect people’s right of the separation of church and state, spirituality was affected as well. A huge misconception of spirituality is that it is the same thing as religion, when in fact it is something separate. Zapf made sure to recognize and explain this difference early on in his article.
The western view of spirituality is that every revolves around the self. Environment,