It’s interesting how effective a different perspective can be. The carnival fun-house thrives on the idea of a skewed perspective, false mirrors, smoke and mazes. Once we’re given the chance to see things from a different angle, we find different details, different nuances; things we’d missed before. This is also one of the interesting things about the Christian life.

Much of our growth is actually the process of having our perspective changed. We must learn to think more like Christ and less like a fallen man (or woman if you are one). Scripture repeatedly develops this contrast. It’s one thing to acknowledge it when things are going well. Yet it’s entirely a different thing when we’re in the midst of suffering.

Suffering heightens and accenuates many of our weaknesses. If we are prone to look to other people rather than God when things are well, how much moreso in the midst of suffering. If we are prone to self-pity (which is actually a manifestation of pride), how much moreso in as difficulties pool around our feet. It is often in the midst of suffering when we find it most difficult to fully trust God. Yet God has designed suffering, as the refiner’s fire, to remove the dross of sin from us that we might emerge more fully reflecting His precious image.

Many struggle with this idea that God somehow ordains the suffering of His people. While I understand the hesitancy, Scripture tells us to rejoice when we encounter suffering. James tells his readers to “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2) How foreign are these words to ears raised on the notion that “bad things don’t happen to good people.” As James continues, he explains that trials produce a testing of our faith and that “the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:3-4). To these same people, James does not tell them that when they encounter trials, to pray that God would remove the trial, he does not tell them to pray even that God would swiftly deliver them through it, he tells them to pray for wisdom (James 1:5).

Peter says something strikingly similar. Recognizing that his readers are in the midst of severe trial, he nonetheless instructs them to rejoice at God’s sovereign grace that has elected them unto salvation and upholds them even in the midst of their suffering (1 Peter 1:1-6): “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials” (1 Peter 1:6). Just as James said that the testing of faith served a greater purpose, Peter continues, arguing that “the tested genuineness of your faith–more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire–may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7).

Both Peter and James, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit connect an attitude of rejoicing to the suffering of believers. They can do this because they have a different perspective. They “eyes of their hearts” have been enlightened (Ephesians 1:18) so that they (and Lord willing, us along with them) may say with Paul: “we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Paul then says something revealing the true extent of how God’s perspective is different than ours: “this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Paul, of all people, from our perspective, had a right to complain, after all, he was able to say “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers” (2 Corinthians 11:24-26). All this while American Christians have little more to fear than ridicule.

How many of us, in the dark night of despair can say that we realize it is but a “slight momentary affliction” because we view it in light of the “eternal weight of glory” that awaits us? I know that far too often, this certainly does not describe me. We must immerse ourselves in the Word, we must internalize it. We must pray, and pray, and pray that God would grant us His perspective, that we would see with His eyes and walk in His strength after all, it’s perfected in our weakness, right? (2 Corinthians 12:9). It’s all a matter of perspective.

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