The True Test of Faith: Can You Still Believe When Someone Hurts You?

When does a person’s faith truly reveal itself? This is one of the most fundamental and practical questions in serving God.

After all, almost everyone believes during times of comfort and calm. But what happens when reality becomes painful and deeply unsettling? What happens when a person is hurt, humiliated, disappointed, or overwhelmed by suffering?

Does faith remain strong even then, or does it begin to collapse?

Yaakov Yisrael Lugasi, in his book Nafshi BiShe’elati, explains that the real test of faith is measured specifically in moments of anger and frustration.

The more reasons a person has to become angry, upset, or resentful, and yet still chooses not to surrender to anger, the more his faith is revealed.

According to Rabbi Lugasi, controlling anger is not weakness or emotional numbness, but an act of faith. The person understands that whatever is happening ultimately comes from God, and therefore he surrenders his own will before the will of the Creator.

Three Levels of the Test of Faith

To explain this more deeply, Rabbi Lugasi divides the test of faith into three different situations.

Situation One: Suffering Without Someone to Blame

The first situation is the easiest level of the test.

This refers to situations where a person suffers or experiences disappointment, but there is no specific person to blame.

Examples include:

• An object breaking

• A device malfunctioning

• Losing money or property

• Illness and suffering

• Delays in finding a spouse

• Difficulty earning a livelihood

In these situations, there is no obvious human target for anger.

Precisely because no one can be blamed, it becomes easier for a person to say: “This came from God. This is His will.”

Accepting the situation becomes more manageable because there is no temptation to direct the anger toward another person.

Situation Two: When a Person Blames Himself

The second situation is harder.

Here, the person himself caused the damage:

• He forgot something important

• Failed to protect something valuable

• Was careless

• Made a mistake

Now there is someone to blame: himself.

As a result, self criticism, regret, and frustration arise:

“Why wasn’t I more careful?”
“How could I have done this?”

Yet Rabbi Lugasi explains something very profound.

Even though a person can become angry at himself, self directed anger does not fully satisfy the emotional urge behind anger. Part of what makes anger feel emotionally “rewarding” is the ability to place the blame onto someone else and make them share in the pain.

When a person is angry at himself, he remains alone with the suffering. There is nobody else to “transfer” the pain onto.

Because of this, the anger often loses its emotional usefulness more quickly, making it somewhat easier for the person eventually to let go, forgive himself, and accept that this too came from God.

Situation Three: The Hardest Test of All

The third situation is the most difficult test of faith. Here, a person suffers real harm:

• Financial loss

• Humiliation

• Emotional pain

• Damage to health or reputation

And another person clearly caused it: Someone hurt him, embarrassed him, or damaged him, even if unintentionally.

Suddenly, there is a very clear address for the anger.

This creates a double challenge: First, the pain itself is real and intense, and second, there is someone concrete to blame.

This, Rabbi Lugasi explains, is where the greatest spiritual danger begins.

The Poison of Resentment

Rabbi Lugasi describes resentment as something spiritually poisonous.

He writes that denial of God’s will “seeps into the heart like the venom of a snake.” Snake venom does not destroy instantly. It slowly spreads through the body.

So too bitterness, hatred, and refusal to forgive slowly spread through the heart and begin weakening a person’s faith from within.

This is the true test: Can a person still believe that everything ultimately comes from God even when another human being hurt him?

The Inner Struggle

Rabbi Lugasi explains that the yetzer hara tempts the wounded person to seek emotional relief by making the guilty party suffer too.

The injured person feels:

“At least let him feel bad.”
“At least let him suffer with me.”

This is where faith begins failing. Because deep down, the person knows intellectually that everything comes from God, yet emotionally he transfers ultimate responsibility onto the human being instead.

The higher level of faith is not merely remaining silent or suppressing anger outwardly.

It is reaching a place where a person can even comfort the one who hurt him, reassuring him that ultimately everything came from Heaven.

“Let Him Curse, for God Told Him To”

The truly complete believer is someone who succeeds even in the third and hardest category.

Such a person understands that the human beings who hurt him are not the ultimate source of his suffering. They are merely the visible instruments through which the Heavenly decree unfolded.

Rabbi Lugasi brings two powerful examples from Tanach.

Joseph and His Brothers

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. Yet years later he told them: “It was not you who sent me here, but God.”

Joseph looked beyond the human action and recognized the hand of God behind everything.

King David and Shimei ben Gera

When David fled from his enemies, Shimei publicly cursed and humiliated him.

Yet David responded: “Leave him alone and let him curse, for God has told him to.”

Again, a person suffers public humiliation at the hands of another human being, yet still accepts it through the lens of faith.

The Essence of Faith

This, Rabbi Lugasi explains, is the deepest essence of faith: Not merely suffering quietly, but reaching an inner understanding that completely changes the way a person sees reality.

The other person is not the ultimate power; he is only the messenger. God alone remains the true source and guide behind everything that occurs.

Rabbi Lugasi concludes: “This is the complete believer. Even in the third category, where suffering and humiliation come through another person and there appears to be someone upon whom to place anger and blame, he still conquers his anger through faith, understanding that they are only agents carrying out a Heavenly decree. As Joseph said, ‘It was not you who sent me here, but God,’ and as David said, ‘Leave him alone and let him curse, for God has told him to.’ This is the person complete in his faith. May God grant us this level. Amen.”