The Twitterverse/blogosphere is an odd place to be if you’re a numb, faithless washed-up believer who’s gone a week without so much as an inspired moment. There are too many others (some of whom are my friends) whose output is not only prolific but just so damned upbeat. Maybe this is Christian propaganda at work – emphasise the thrilling, joyous reality of life in the Spirit and maybe others will want what we have. But there’s a good chance many of these happy souls are genuinely enjoying a faith that’s meaningful, clear and uncomplicated. Is it right (or even polite) to wish that they feel otherwise?

Today I listened to a heartbreaking piece on BBC Radio 4’s PM news programme in which the presenter Eddie Mair discussed bereavement and honesty in the face of terminal cancer with Barbara Want, the widow of former radio colleague Nick Clarke. She said that, despite the apparent evidence that Nick was fading before her eyes, they had never been given an ‘X months to live’ prognosis and she was in profound denial, clinging stubbornly to hope until, at last, she was told to ensure he’d put his affairs in order. Two days later, Nick died.

In the midst of this moving interview, Barbara said something that made me sit bolt upright in the car. She had been surviving on hope, but it had been a ‘false friend’. When she finally confronted the truth, the despair was ‘easier to bear’ than the delusion hope had presented.

Barbara’s experience mirrors, in a sense, my own move from a (delusional?) hope about the Christian life to a hunger for truth even if it brings despair. I don’t want false comfort; I don’t want to be told that God knows best, or that he looks after us, or that things will be set right in the afterlife. I want the brutal truth at all costs. For instance: If the truth is that no-one survives when their heart and brain fail, or that thousands more will die in war- and famine-torn Africa whether or not they confess Christ, or that our deepest experiences of God’s love are merely conditioned neurochemical responses to our environment, filtered through Freudian impulses, then I want the courage to face this and still follow Jesus and live in a way that changes the world. Delusion cannot be better than truth.

I’m sure the bloggers I referred to above would take issue with the assertion that their profuse positivity springs from a fantasy, a deluded hope. And here’s the thing: they may be right. All we have said about God, salvation, heaven and the kingdom may be real and I’m just going through a tricky numb patch (note to self: ‘cloud of unknowing’ sounds much more poetic). But faith that’s valuable must wrestle with the unknowable until daybreak, and may thereafter have to put up with limping through the rest of its journey.