We Christians can’t seem to get suffering right. We don’t want to talk about it, perhaps because we know how much can go wrong. If we start a conversation about suffering, some people won’t stop. We can even get a competition going about whose suffering should take top prize. 

            Even though we don’t want to talk about suffering, and we can veer off track too easily, we nevertheless need to because we have so many problems with it. 

            The early church, out of which First Peter arose, knew things about suffering most of us can’t imagine. I hope we never have to learn what they knew. Even if the kind of suffering First Peter talks about arose out of a situation of persecution from Rome, what it teaches us about suffering can help with the kinds of suffering we face as well. If we typically misunderstand suffering, maybe the insights of First Peter can help us make progress toward getting it right. We might explore some of the ways that our thinking can be unhelpful, and even unfaithful. 

A wrongheaded idea

            There is a line of teaching you may have heard from televangelists and some other preachers called the “prosperity gospel” that, by overemphasizing a few Bible verses and disregarding others, makes claims not supported by the gospel of Jesus. It maintains that if we have enough faith, we will succeed in everything we do. Some verses in Proverbs

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