My faith grew up in a prosperity gospel context - you trust God, therefore good things happen. Jesus wants you healthy and wealthy. Suffering means you're doing something wrong or lacking faith.
I've lived enough years now to know that's nonsense. I've watched faithful people get cancer. I've known believers who lost everything. And I was taught it was somehow their spiritual fault.
Peter writes to people being persecuted and says, essentially, 'don't be surprised that you're suffering. This is actually normal.' The 'painful trial' isn't aberrant - it's the expected path of following someone the world is hostile to.
I've had to do the grief work of admitting my parents' theology lied to me. But that lie almost cost me my faith because when suffering came, I thought I'd lost God. I'm slowly learning that suffering is where I actually encounter God most deeply - in the dark places, feeling abandoned but held. Peter gives permission to say: God didn't promise comfort. God promised presence in the refining fire.
I'm teaching my own kids differently. Real faith doesn't make life easy. Real faith makes you brave in hard things. That's the difference.
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