What Good Is It?

Suffering is bad.
Everyone knows this. Pretty non-controversial statement; right?
...
Or is it?
American Evangelicals of the early 21st century seem to me to be completely clueless when it comes to a Theology of Suffering. "Suffer" or "suffering" is used in 114 verses in the Bible (ESV), including the scandalous statement: "... we rejoice in our sufferings, ..." (Romans 5:3) Something the early Christians did was throw a party when things got painful. Well, that's different.
The word, "affliction" occurs 74 times; "distress" shows up in 92 verses. Those don't sound like fun, either.
What Christians have known for 2,000 years - but modern believers have forgotten - is that suffering as a Jesus Follower was normal, expected, and predictable phenomena. Jesus was pretty clear on this: "And whoever does not take up his cross [instrument of torturous execution] and follow me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:38; 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23).
One of Jesus' Main Guys told a group of other Christians, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you." (1Pet 4:12). Peter chided his friends for thinking that these trials were aberrations of their life in Christ.
I've written about Christian suffering before here and here; as well as preaching where I was a pastor.
The point is that suffering for being a Jesus Follower is, Biblically, expected, unsurprising, and part of the package.
And there are a LOT of reasons why we experience suffering as God people. I ran into one just today.  I poked at that technically and found something interesting. And this is one of the rare times when I will do this: the translation may be misleading.

• Psalm 4:1, a modern translation says this: "You have given me relief when I was in distress." 
• A literal translation goes something like "in-the-adversity you-enlarged-me." 

OK, what's the difference? In the first translation, it feels like the Psalmist (King David, BTW) is reflecting on how God engineered things so that David wouldn't have to feel the full effects of some trouble he was experiencing; that God had given him "relief." But in the second translation, a more literal one, David seems to be saying something like: 'in all that trouble, you made me a bigger man.' In the first, God removes some of the sufferings; in the second, God redeems the suffering for a greater good.
Now - do not get me wrong - both ideas are supported by scripture. God clearly delivers people from evil - and Jesus encouraged us to pray along those lines (Matt. 6:13)!
But God also creatively allows suffering to accomplish a greater good - the producing of "character." Here's the full bit of scripture that I quoted a part of, above. "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings," - here's the rest: "... knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ..." (Rom 5:3-4).
Suffering, as an apparent evil, is used by God to create a virtue that otherwise might not exist. Seems to me this is rather creative of God - a kind of Karma Jiu-Jitsu where the intent of The Evil One is turned and a blessing is created, instead.
In my adversities, if I'm paying attention, God is "enlarging" me. God is creating endurance, character, and hope.
OK, it seems we should change that first comment. Suffering is unpleasant, but it doesn't have to be bad.