Why the type of faith required by Christianity is more common than we suppose

This is the best page of writing I've read in the last two weeks, so I thought I would share it here due to its clarity, insightfulness and wisdom. Lewis is such a help when it comes to taking seemingly complex matters and reframing them in ways that leave the reader wondering why he had not seen such things before. In his essay, On Obstinacy in Belief, he devotes a section to tackling the common objection that the type of faith (or trust) required by Christianity is simple-minded, naive and un-intelligent. His response is worth reading and considering. 

In Christianity faith is demanded of us; but there are situations in which we demand it of others. There are times when we can do all that a fellow creature needs if only he will trust us. 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 beginning 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 ask them to believe that what is painful will relieve their pain and 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 it 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 only rely 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 much 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. From this it is a strictly logical conclusion that the behavior which was appropriate to them will be appropriate to us, only very much more so...

If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that his operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give Him our confidence in spite of this.  

(CS Lewis, On Obstinacy in Belief)