distrust

In getting a dog out of a trap, in extracting a thorn from a child's finger, in teaching a boy to swim or rescuing one who can't, in getting a frightened beginner over a nasty place on a mountain, the one fatal obstacle may be their distrust.

We are asking them to trust us in the teeth of their senses, their imagination, and their intelligence. We are asking them to believe that what is painful will relieve their pain and that what looks dangerous is their only safety. We ask them to accept apparent impossibilities: that moving the paw farther back into the trap is the way to get out ; that hurting the finger very much more will stop the finger hurting ; that water which is obviously permeable will resist and support the body ; that holding onto the only support within reach is not the way to avoid sinking ; that to go higher and onto a more exposed ledge is the way not to fall.

To support all these incredibilia, we can rely only on the other party's confidence in us, a confidence certainly not based on demonstration; admittedly shot through with emotion, and perhaps - if we are strangers - resting on nothing, but such assurance as the look of our face and the tone of our voice can supply (or even, for the dog, on our smell).

Sometimes, because of their unbelief, we can do no mighty works. But if we succeed, we do so because they have maintained their faith in us against apparently contrary evidence. No one blames us for demanding such faith. No one blames them for giving it. No one says afterwards what an unintelligent dog or child or boy that must have been to trust us...

Now to accept the Christian propositions is ipso facto to believe that we are to God, always, as that dog or child or bather or mountain climber was to us, only very much more so. (C.S. Lewis)

==taken from "Reaching for the Invisible God", by Philip Yancey==