A cynic's analogy: faith in crisis

You’re sat opposite someone you’ve come to know and love.

Talking openly and honestly, learning from their wisdom and being inspired by their stories, you’ve grown to feel totally at ease in their presence - even though you recognise how inferior you are compared to them.

They have promised in the past there is literally nothing that could make them want to abandon you and that they are totally committed to supporting and guiding you to become the best version of yourself you can be.

You believe them when they say that being friends with you brings them great joy and purpose too - even though it seems irrational that they should be so keen.

When things go badly, you confide in them and seek counsel. When things go well, you credit it to them and their amazing ability to influence your life for the better.

Mid-conversation, and out of nowhere, someone runs up behind you and in full view of your friend opposite, sucker punches you in the side of the head so as to render you momentarily blind, deaf and bloodied.

When the initial shock passes, you look over to your friend for help and are immediately aware of their compassionate, and empathetic response. They do all they can to comfort you and tend to your wounds but you’re still a little dazed and find it hard to sit still or process what’s going on. They hold you and say kind and reassuring things to you that help you calm down and so you submit to their embrace. When your sight starts to slowly refocus and the ringing in your ears isn’t so deafening, you replay the incident over in your mind. You suddenly pull away from you friend and look again to try to read their own emotions…

You see compassion and empathy still there, yes. Also hurt, frustration and sadness. Anger? A bit, perhaps. But you keep searching their face and realise what’s missing: surprise.

For you, this attack came totally out of the blue. But the way they were facing, they’d have seen this coming a mile off. So what the hell?!

Why didn’t they warn you?? They made no obvious attempt to prevent the attacker and just sat there letting you waffle on about - you can’t even remember what now - like an idiot.

What about their promises to support and guide you? They might have been there when it happened - but for all the help they were, they may just as well have abandoned you anyway. The fact they hadn’t, and yet had apparently done nothing until after it had happened is kinda almost worse!

You spill out your offence and feelings of betrayal and they just let you rant. They make no attempt to defend themselves or argue. Instead, they calmly assure you that they understand. They understand how your feeling. They understand your hurt. They gently explain that there was good reason not to intervene, but that they can’t tell you why...

Why can’t they tell you?! Is it that they literally can not, because they lack the capability to? Are they even the amazing person you’ve come to know and love after all?? Or is there some other reason they can’t explain what’s going on? Is it you?? Something you’ve done? Something you are? Something you don’t have? Why do you have to be kept in the blue like this?? Made to suffer and wonder and question everything you thought you knew about this relationship…

Then your friend says something ridiculous: ‘Just trust me.’

After what just happened? Are they mad?! They want you to go back to your cosy little chats about not very much when you now know they’re willing to just sit there and allow you to be so needlessly and brutally assaulted? They’ve not even said sorry or taken any responsibility for their part in letting it happen. How do you know they won’t do that again and that you’re not about to get attacked again at any given moment?

You appeal to them to give you some sort of assurance or guarantee that it won’t happen again - but they don’t. They dodge the question and go back to talking in vague riddles about trusting them even though they can’t explain why it happened or why they seemed to do nothing to stop it.

So now you’re sat there: bruised, confused and scared. All you’ve ever known about your friend has been cast into doubt, and even if you are able to trust that their reason for keeping you in the dark is due to your limitations and not theirs - that there is some greater, legitimate rationale for their behaviour beyond your own understanding, how are you ever supposed to feel safe in their presence again?

How can you sit there, back still to the direction that the attacker came from, talking to this so-called friend while so distracted by the new realisation of how vulnerable you are? You’re still physically battered and yet you’re effectively being told to ignore your current reality, disregard your justified anxiety, and just get back to trusting, knowing and loving this friend like before.

Well excuse me for my cynicism, but unless you’ve just been punched in the head too, I’m not really interested in taking your advice on learning to be trusting again. I choose to believe there must be a bigger reason for my suffering than that which I’m capable of understanding, but I will not take orders to disregard my current pain and confusion, however uncomfortable that makes anyone else about their own relationship with said friend.

I’m living in fear and hope simultaneously. I feel equally grumpy and vulnerable. It is exhausting and uncomfortable. That’s where my faith is at right now.