This week’s Time Magazine “cover girl” is Mother Teresa, the world-renowned Catholic missionary to the lepers and poor of Calcutta, India, who died in 1997. In case you haven’t heard, there is a book coming out next Tuesday called Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, which includes letters that she sent to her confessors and spiritual directors over many years. The shocking revelation is that she struggled in the midst of her heroic service to have faith in God. Consider the following quotes:
“I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart & make me suffer untold agony,”(undated)
“Such deep longing for God and … repulsed empty no faith no love no zeal. … Heaven means nothing pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything.” (1956)
“What do I labour for? If there be no God — there can be no soul — if there is no Soul then Jesus You also are not true.” (1959)
Wow. THAT’S Mother Teresa??? It certainly sounds like the book will be an incredible window into the mind and soul of one of the most well-known servants of God the world has ever known. I’m also sure that it will open both Catholicism and faith in God to passionate arguments from all sides. I’m expecting to hear three interpretations offered regarding Mother Teresa’s words:
) “This is confirmation that God is a myth and faith in God is a farce.”
The reasoning goes like this: “There seems to be no correlation between devotion to God and tangible experience and assurance of God’s existence. Surely the one who is most devoted to God would know better than most whether or not God truly exists. Teresa’s deep struggles to even believe in God confirm that not only does God not exist, but that spiritual devotion does not necessarily improve one’s life.” For example, one well-known atheist, Christopher Hitchens (author of the recent best-seller God is Not Great and the Mother Teresa-bashing The Missionary Position) is quoted by Time as saying “She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself.” Ouch.
Teresa’s words of struggle and doubt will certainly cause people to recognize that the most devoted to God do not necessarily have the most tangible experience of His presence. But the fact is that Teresa probably has a lot of company in that she had more tangible experiences of God in her younger days as a Christian, but as time went on was required to walk more and more by faith and not by sight. Remember what Jesus said to Thomas after the resurrection in John 20:28-29, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” And as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “We live by faith, not by sight.” Atheists will argue that this sort of faith is blind belief in an unprovable myth, but faith - being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1) is at the core of what it means to follow God. Heroic faith is a faith that continues to serve God even when there is no visual or tangible proof of His existence.
And seriously – you try living among the poorest of the poor for over forty years and not doubting God’s existence.
2) “This is confirmation that Catholics do not really know God, since they preach a salvation based on works and not faith.”
The reasoning for this view goes like this: “Although the Bible teaches that we are acceptable to God only by repenting from our sins and trusting in Jesus’ death for our sins and resurrection from the dead, Catholics have taught that salvation comes through not only faith but by observing the sacraments. Even though Mother Teresa did lots of good works, this is not evidence that she was truly saved, just like Jesus taught in Matthew 7:22-23: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
There are many evangelicals who have been taught that Catholicism is a false religion because of its emphasis on works and sacraments. There are some who have even used Mother Teresa in the past as an example of someone who could still deserve Hell despite her good deeds, because her good deeds alone will never make her acceptable to God. And now, I expect them to triumphantly declare that Teresa’s words have proved their point, that Catholics do not know God.
However, I would be very careful to dismiss millions of people who consider themselves Christians with such a sweeping statement. The truth is that there are true believers within the Catholic Church and there are those who are Christian in name only but do not know God. I just finished reading an incredibly challenging book by two evangelicals-turned-Catholics named Scott and Kimberly Hahn called Rome Sweet Home that is another reminder how some believers find God more present in Catholicism than in any other approach to God. While this essay is not meant to be a thorough treatment of Catholicism, I do wish it to be a quick reminder to be careful not to dismiss an entire denomination but to instead treat people as individuals.
3) “This is confirmation that not only do we all struggle with doubt in the face of an invisible God, but that often the most saintly have the deepest struggles”
Many Catholic leaders have been quick to not only defend Teresa but to hail these revelations as even deeper evidence of her sainthood. They have declared that this book will eventually belong up there with other great confessionals, such as Augustine’s Confessions and St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, and that Teresa’s honesty may eventually be a greater inspiration to people than her service to the poor. Perhaps they are right, or perhaps they are being a little too defensive in the face of the attacks on one of their most treasured Catholics.
I believe that if nothing else, this book will serve as a simple but much-needed reminder to people that everyone struggles with faith in God and feels at times His absence in the midst of their situation. It can be easy to put spiritual leaders on a pedestal, thinking that they must not deal with the same struggles and doubts that the average Christian deals with. The truth is often the reverse; often the most saintly experience the deepest struggles and strongest attacks. Consider Peter’s words:
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire– may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)
What a passage! Nothing reveals whether or not someone’s faith is genuine more than intense suffering. When God is seemingly absent, when holding on to Him means facing spiritual opposition and physical suffering, your faith is revealed for what it truly is. Do you continue to serve Him, or do you give up and declare God dead and move on? If there were ever a Biblical example (other than Jesus) of a righteous man suffering and experiencing the absence of God, it was Job. In one of his more memorable lines, he said “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15). Let me say it once again – heroic faith is a faith that continues to serve God even when there is no visual or tangible proof of His existence.
Only God knows the truth about Mother Teresa’s soul and how genuine her faith really was. But if genuine faith is demonstrated by good works, and heroic faith by good works despite spiritual and physical opposition, then Mother Teresa possessed heroic faith. She used to tell those who served under her “Give God permission to use you without consulting you” and evidently she lived that out, continuing to serve God without demanding that He first show her His presence. If you experience God tangibly, praise God for it; but if not, continue to walk by faith and not by sight.
Write a comment