This morning I have tried to track down a post I wrote a few years back on James 1, where I wrote about being cross with an old friend (James is my favourite book of the Bible) for what he had to say about suffering at a time when the little church in Dibley was suffering big time.  Because I can't quite recall when it was and because I don't have the patience to search through every post I've ever written (well over a thousand of them), and because I couldn't find it via Google I can't link it.  Which is annoying as I'm sure it'd be useful to see what I thought back then. [Update - after I'd posted this I did another trawl and the older post can be found here.]

James 1:2 - 7 NRSV

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.  But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

What I do recall was being quite angry that James suggested that trials be perceived as joy and trying to work out if the development of endurance or maturity was reason enough for suffering to be purposeful.

Yesterday's IBRA notes suggested that suffering 'can' help develop such characteristics as patience, wisdom, maturity.  I can go with that, but it isn't what James says - he talks about trials, which may well not be synonymous with suffering, and he is more emphatic: it will produce endurance leading to maturity. 

I'm not so struck by the requirement never to doubt either... whatever happened to "I believe, Lord help my unbelief'?  I find myself recalling the old hymn "Just as I am" with its verse

Just as I am, though tossed about

With many a conflict, many a doubt

Fightings and fears, within, without:

Oh Lamb of God, I come.

I believe that faith is stronger than doubt (as part of hopeful imbalance between that which brings life and that which deals death) but it doesn't dismiss the reality that sometimes I do doubt, do question.  So is James right, then, that I should not expect to receive anything from God because I am double-minded?  I think maybe the answer is 'yes and no' and harps back to ideas about the priesthood of all believers.  Based on my own trembling faith, my own real fears, my own honest doubts, then the answer would be that he is, regrettably, right  But that's only part of the story because this is balanced - or hopefully outweighed - by the faith and hope of others who can expect to receive from God what is prayed for.  Maybe somewhere along the line we have got too focused on the individual and personal and lost sight of the corporate?  It is not for nothing that creed-saying churches often use a form of words along the lines of "this is our faith, we believe..."; the responsibility for believing, hoping, praying is not held by the individuals, thus heaping guilt when they fail, but by the body, where someone is always (we trust) able to do the believing, hoping and praying.

So, will current experiences teach me anything?  I hope so!  I hope that I might discover more of myself and more of God.  I hope that telling my story - as it happens and maybe, reflectively, afterwards - will help others in their own walk of faith and doubt, hope and fear, laughter and tears.  I hope, not in a wishy-washy wishful thinking kind of a way, but in a hope-in-Christ kind of a way.  And of course it is the hope that this experience can transform me for good, can somehow speak for and to others, can somehow be put to good purpose by God, that mysteriously allows me to be authentic trusting that ultimately all will be well.

Consider it joy?  Well, no, not in a trivial way.  Be joy-filled within it?  Well, that's what we are equipped to be by God's Spirit if we understand joy as some sort of irrepressible force for things positive.

A long post, mostly "off the top of my head" but I think we need to avoid either trivialising tricky passages or just avoiding them.  James is an old friend - and I enjoy wrestling with what he has to say.