Consider It Pure Joy When Facing Trials
Trials develop perseverance and mature character that should be welcomed, not avoided.
James opens his letter with the counterintuitive command: 'Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.' Why joy? Because trials produce perseverance, which produces maturity and completeness. Suffering is not punishment but training. Character cannot develop without challenge. This perspective transforms the meaning of difficulty from curse to opportunity. James says “consider”, not “feel” — hēgeomai is a reckoning, an accounting judgment about the trial, not an emotion produced by it. The response to trials determines their effect.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
Joni Eareckson Tada, paralyzed for decades, testifies that 'suffering is not punishment; it's an opportunity to trust God more deeply.'
Epistle of James
Written about in
- What Christianity says about grief
James writes consider, not feel — hēgeomai is an accounting judgment about what the trial produces, not an emotion it is supposed to cause. He is claiming suffering is training rather than punishment. That is a claim about what trials yield — perseverance, then maturity — not a comfort addressed to the newly bereaved.