Like they were complimenting me for being simple. For not understanding how the world actually works.

I've thought about that a lot in the hours since. And I realized something: I think I understand the world better *because* of my faith, not despite it. 💭

When you believe in something larger than yourself, you stop pretending that everything that matters can be measured or proven. You accept that there are depths to human experience that reason alone can't access. And once you accept that, you start noticing things—the way people act when they think no one is looking, how quickly they abandon their values when it's convenient, how much of what we call "truth" is actually just consensus about what's profitable to believe.

That's not naive. That's clear sight. 👁️

Faith teaches you to look at suffering without flinching. Not to fix it or explain it away, but to really look at it—to see what it reveals about what matters. It teaches you that people are capable of extraordinary cruelty and extraordinary love, often at the same time. It teaches you not to be shocked by contradiction because you understand that humans are broken and we're always going to be working with broken things.

That's the opposite of naive. That's maturity. 🙏

I think the confusion comes from the fact that faith doesn't make you cynical. It makes you compassionate. And compassion looks like naivety to people who are cynical—because they interpret it as weakness instead of strength. They think that understanding someone's pain means you'll let them hurt you. They think that forgiveness means forgetting. They think that believing in something larger than yourself means you don't believe in yourself.

But that's not what it means. It means I'm bigger than my fear. It means I can see someone clearly and love them anyway. It means I can be hurt and still choose to keep my heart open instead of closing it off. 💫

The world tells you that hard means smart and soft means stupid. But I've learned that it's the opposite—it takes everything you've got to stay open when you've been hurt. It takes real intelligence to believe in goodness when you've seen how much evil exists. It takes actual strength to keep hoping.

And that's not naive. That's courage. 💝

What would it take for you to believe in something without needing proof first?