In our pluralistic society, health care professionals are often called upon to counsel or advise people who have a value system different from their own. This approach is insufficient because it leads to a form of schizophrenia, forcing a person to stifle conscience when carrying out one's professional responsibilities. Moreover, it implies that there is such a thing as a value-free profession. Obviously not, because this attitude would hamper the relationship that a counselor must foster in order to help a person make decisions. In order to present a more workable method, we shall review a few principles of counseling.
Spiritual counseling is concerned with instilling values, strengthening values, or changing values.
A spiritual counselor, sometimes called a spiritual director, is concerned with instructing people in regard to the goals of life and with increasing their affection for these goals. In order to increase commitment to goals, he or she will instruct people but also dispose the person seeking help appreciate and experience the goodness, beauty and effectiveness of the goals in question. In addition, spiritual counseling focuses on the rewards, whether transcendent or temporal, which result from dedication to a particular value system. Ethical counseling on the other hand is concerned with helping people make informed and free decisions in accord with their own personal value systems. The ethical counselor presupposes that the other person has a valid value system and the counselor's task is to help the person judge and act in accord with that system if at all possible.