Prosperity or adversity? Which to you prefer?
Jeremiah Burroughs spoke boldly to his 17th century audience about God’s work in the midst of our prosperity and adversity, though his claims seem strange to many in the early 21st century: prosperity is deadly dangerous, and adversity brings great gain. I’ll let him say it as he did in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Puritan Paperbacks edition):
One taught in the school of Christ learns “… that God by his eternal counsels has set this as his course and way, to bring up his people in this world in an afflicted condition” (p. 115). It is folly not to expect adversity (191, cf. 1 Peter 4:12). “The great design God has in afflicting you, is to break and humble your heart…” (181), and to prompt his people to fall back in faith upon God’s covenant (80). The receptive soul affirms, “I would not have been without this affliction for anything in the world,…” for without it I would have fallen into sin (101). Without afflictions professing Christians quickly find their security in earthly comforts (123, 129), yet in Christ there is strength to support us under all our afflictions. Faith in Christ “is the great grace that is to be acted under afflictions” (63). “There is no work which God has made—the sun, moon, stars and all the world—in which so much of the glory of God appears as in a man who lives quietly in the midst of adversity” (122-23).
The flip-side of advantageous affliction is the danger of wealth. Prosperity is a immense burden for which one needs great strength (103); it is a heavy cross to bear. “Honey, we know, invites bees and wasps to it, and the sweet of prosperity invites the Devil and temptation” (104). While the humble sleep, the cares of the wealthy keep them awake (106). “The Lord conveys the plague of his curse through prosperity, as much as through any thing in the world, and therefore when the soul comes to understand this, this makes it quiet and content” (110). Even though wealth allows the godly the joy of blessing others (98), the way of prosperity is dangerous—like a narrow mountain path along the brink of disaster.
It would be hard to overstate how strange and even offensive these claims are to our comfort-seeking, greed-affirming culture. But Jesus never called us to walk the road of popular opinion. The way of the cross may have no appeal to those who love the world, but it is only through the cross that we find true life and lasting joy (Luke 9:23-24).
