We want the good life. We want to have it all.
James 1:2-4 (AMP)
Consider it nothing but joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into various trials. Be assured that the testing of your faith [through experience] produces endurance [leading to spiritual maturity, and inner peace]. And let endurance have its perfect result and do a thorough work, so that you may be perfect and completely developed [in your faith], lacking in nothing.
God wants us to have it all. Including trials.
Um…well, yeah, but can He please hit the pause button on mine?
I don’t disagree that trials can trigger spiritual growth, and I’m thankful for that, but I’d be mad to say that what I go through on a daily basis is any kind of joy. Illness, to me, is an artifact of a fallen world, and implicit in the necessity for free will; I therefore don’t resent it. I don’t believe that God ‘sends’ the pain; if He did I’d be furious. I do believe that he can’t willy-nilly violate the conditions of His own creation without negating them, and that He does offer the only path that gives a measure of hope and comfort to the afflicted.
This may seem to contradict the existence of miracles, but I don’t think it does; miracles appear in the Bible to make a point; they’re not distributed like Christmas gifts. The recipient was in the right place at the right time.
Suffering is a mystery–I agree that God doesn’t, as a general rule, send it. Rather he allows it. And if miracles were commonplace, they would no longer be miracles. But I look at the “snowflakes,” raised in an era of comfort and protected from all discomfort, who fall apart at microaggressions. If that’s what the absence of suffering does, I say “bring on the suffering.”