What makes a trial a trial?

The Christian faith has a lot to say about trials and how to make sense of them. A popular example is the verse in James "Brother, count in all joy when you meet trials of various kinds." Pastors, teachers, and theologians tell us these kinds of things with some expectation that hearing and knowing this makes us deal with "trials" in productive ways. Yet, if you listen to Christians discuss their lives, it is NOT the norm to hear joy expressed. Trials seem to be more of a struggle than a joy.

So, how can we have so much emphasis on the Christian response to "trials," but we have so little Christian response to "trials"?

I'll offer a few thoughts and as you would expect, these will be consistent with my theme that much of what we believe about the Kingdom of God is not really appropriated in the lives of Christians. The stealth effect of human nature on believers is an ever present influence. The notion that human nature is an exchange based imperative provides some insight in understanding "trials".  For instance, I recently asked a group of Christian men, "what makes a trial a trial?" After a large pregnant pause, the following thoughts started trickling out in response. "Its when something hurts us." "Its when something happens that sets us back." "Its when we lose something we need or want." I am sure this list can go on and on but will have the same central theme - I have done things with an expectation to receive from others or create a desired situation and now my actions are not being rewarded in the way I wish. These could be intentional acts of others, such as breaking a relationship, or an unintentional thing, such as becoming ill or injured or the death of a friend or family.

The fact is, a trial is only a trial when we are making sense of things through our human nature and not our Kingdom mind, which makes sense of things in a different way. The Kingdom mind understands things this way - God has taken care of all my soul's needs by redeeming me and so my response to experiences in the world is just faithfulness to my redemption. In other words as life events disappoint our nature's wants, we don't feel the anger, frustration, and fear that exchange would produce, but we feel thankfulness that these events are not what determines our soul's well-being.

Let me use a popular model from human psychology to further explain this. Although we are spiritual, we are still human and thus we are not void of psychology (thoughts, feelings, and choices). The Emotion Regulation model explains things this way -

An event happens which produces a felt emotion. We then either suppress that emotion or act on in in ways we think are appropriate. The type of response is what we call coping. Most often we construct a response that we and others feel are consistent with what we believe. 

This is often what Christians and non-Christians both do, and the difference between them is simply how people evaluate the response. This is one reason the world believes Christianity is nothing really different or special but just a particular coping mechanism, nothing more. However, God tells us to "count it joy" not to cope with it well (it being "trial"). So there must be something more we are missing.

Yes there is. The Emotion Regulation model has another key point. The model suggests that we can reappraise the event and not even have the same felt emotion. In other words we can think about the event that occurs in our lives in a way that we do not even feel the fear, disappointment, etc. from a "trial." The question is what drives the reappraisal mechanism. The humanist would propose something like the power of positive thinking, whereas God would point us to our Kingdom mind described above.

The power of positive thinking is still subject to social exchange and must convince us that we can make exchanges work in our favor if we just keep trying. The problem is the source of the power. Is the exchange mechanisms in our life trustworthy? Are they capable of delivering?

The Kingdom mind reminds us that God has provided for me all of His Heavenly provisions, independent of the event. So, why are we seeing the event unfavorably? In fact unfavorable events actually tune us in more to our heavenly privilege and less on the earthly rights. This is actually what "repentance" means. Reappraisal produces joy INSTEAD of the typical felt emotions. That is why "we can count it all joy." The power of positive thinking is suspect. We cannot depend on the world around us to reward us the way we want all the time. The power of reappraisal using our Kingdom mind is underwritten by the power of the resurrection.

The Christian life is not just a better coping mechanism than other human strategies for coping, it is a renewed mind that transforms felt emotions in a way that a 'trial" is not really a "trial", but an opportunity to receive in faith the privileges and provisions of the Heavenlies. There's the joy!!

Certainly worth pondering .....

You can read more about this in

found @ http://www.amazon.com/Stuck-Stinkin-Thinkin-Divine-Alternative/dp/1494266237/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429022806&sr=8-1&keywords=stuck+in+stinkin+thinkin+caldwell