I read many different kinds of literature, from psychological research to spiritual narrative. One day I was reading ?The Supremacy of God in Preaching?, by John Piper. Suddenly, my eye snagged on one sentence, and I stopped to untangle my brain. ?Heaven is for people who love purity, not for people who simply loathe pain.? I moved on, reading one page after another, but not able to concentrate. I turned back a few times just to read how that went again. Then, I realised that that thought was playing all by itself and I was listening to those words rather than reading new ones. Heaven is for those who love purity ? not for those who simply loathe pain.

I?ll just leave for the moment the whole issue of whether there actually IS a heaven or a hell. That?s a different kind of discussion. One thing I find interesting in what Piper said is the contrast of perspectives. Having one or the other can make a huge difference in the life we live now, let alone what may come after we pass on from here.

Do you organise yourself around what you find interesting, exciting, beautiful, fulfilling, and desirous, or do you organise yourself around what you don?t want to experience, put up with, risk encountering, and endure? Are you spending most of your energy trying to get away from or move toward?

In preoccupying oneself with such things as goodness, order, beauty, and virtue people create their own heaven on earth even before they die. In obsessing over and finding ugly such things as threat, meaninglessness, chaos, and futility people can create their own hell on earth ? one might say, ?Even before they really live.? Are we engaged largely in the experience of living or in that of avoiding the pitfalls of life?

Coincidentally, these contrasting perspectives have been echoed in the field of clinical psychology. One group of psychologists organises around positives and strengths while another around pathology and deficits. While the first group will focus on such things as creativity, performance of various kinds, and achievement, the second group will focus on symptoms of dysfunction and distress, degrees of impairment, and diagnosis. The first group might be attempting to increase something, while the second group might be attempting to decrease something. They will each have their strategies.

Where does all this leave the typical patient or client seeking help? A person might want to ask him or herself what he or she is trying to accomplish. Usually people don?t come to a doctor unless there is something wrong. However, they might come to a coach in order to make something that is good even better. A psychotherapist, on the other hand, can inhabit both domains; a therapist can coach, working toward a positive enhancement, and a therapist can also conduct clinical assessment and intervention designed to reduce impairment.

One of the elements that makes therapy work is that the client, the person coming for help, actually knows what they want to achieve. The motivation for change can be driven by the pain of suffering or the excitement of potential growth. The work, then, can become remedial or preventative.

Among Christian people, those to whom Piper was writing, it is recognised that one can come to God in order to keep from going to hell, or one can come to God sensing that such a spiritual life offers more significance and satisfaction ? the chance to actually know God. Either one is a valid reason for the supremacy of God in preaching. Either one can get a person started.

The question for Christians might be, which one provides a greater return on one?s investment?

Likewise, in the secular world which approach provides a more lasting and significant result from clinical psychology ? personal growth or mere symptom reduction?