The New Testament pattern for formation is consistently one of dying and rising, not bypassing death. There are countless moments throughout life, that leave an individual with the distinct feelings of death. There is no demeaning or belittling element in this process, for trauma is unique to the individual. Just like a 2 year old who stubs his toe and experiences the worst day of their life, the combat veteran also experiences traumatic disequilibrium while serving in a hostile theater. It is important to see that both of these moments are traumatic because they impact the very synapse of the human mind and condition. They can pop up later in life with little to no warning and the individual will spend as much time necessary for adequate rumination, expansion, and hopefully expulsion before new negative synapse disrupts that which is life giving. The question then becomes, is navigating darkness the prerequisite and/ or only path to the heart of God?
As sons and daughters of the most high Creator God who lives in Heaven, we have unencumbered access to the resources of heaven through the empowerment and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit is daily manifestation of the very essence of God at work in our lives. However, darkness being a prerequisite becomes problematic, but the removing of its inherent necessity could also open a very different type of wound.
If sonship is legally secured and darkness is not required, it becomes easy to resist the very work God is doing in seasons of difficulty. A person in a genuine dark night, being stripped of idols and false consolations, could use the argument to short-circuit the process by reassuring themselves they are already a son/daughter and therefore nothing more is required. This is a bit misguided and incomplete. The wilderness was consistently used as a means of course correction, not desired but also not disdained.
Son/daughter-ship is not earned by darkness (think works-righteousness of interior suffering) as if God loves you more after you've been sufficiently purged. That quickly and often quietly accepted distortion is worth resisting. Grace can arrive suddenly and without a prescribed process — Saul/Paul and the Damascus road, Moses and the burning bush, or my own story of middle of the night experience in the Evangel University Chapel (You can read about that later). Simply put, God is not bound to any specific method.
The argument fails not because it's false, but because it's incomplete. Legal status and interior formation are both real, both necessary, and never in competition. They are simply complimentary, co-existent, and continually necessary. There is a better framing: “Because I am already a son/daughter, I can trust the Father in the darkness — including the darkness He Himself ordains for my formation.”
He is not looking for our suffering or even requiring it. He ordains a perfect plan and we choose to walk in the vast and yet narrow path of His continually perfected will, made possible by the very journey of Jesus on this earth, through death and hell, and finally to the right hand of the Father in Heaven. We too follow that path.