Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Apparently, Mother Theresa was a hypocrite and a liar.
Those are just a few of the words that have sprouted up in reference to her newly released book of letters and journals that portray her spiritual doubts. The letters reveal her deep crisis of faith with quotes such as, “Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.”
But even Jesus had his doubts while on the cross. Why are we expecting more of Mother Theresa than God’s own son? These letters in no way undercut her works. Her works are only emphasized by the fact that she did not believe they were giving her a direct path into heaven. As any other deeply spiritual person, she questioned whether there was a heaven and whether or not she was the type of person who could get in.
Time magazine compares her letters and journals with her Nobel Prize speech, calling them “extravagantly dissonant” and remarking that her works contradicted her feelings and letters. It portrays her as being hypocritical. I have to disagree. Never did Mother Theresa say, “You should be more like me,” or “You should love God and your faith the way that I do.” Her recommendations and reproaches are no less helpful because she was not a perfect example of faith. They are even more important because she knew what it was like to feel like God was not there.
If anything, Mother Theresa now seems more holy and self-sacrificing. How amazing that even though she was having a very deep crisis of faith, even though she believed that God was not with her, she still gave her whole life to the church and to helping the less fortunate. How many of us, in our happy and untroubled lives, do a fraction of what she did in the throes of a dark unhappiness? It would be unbelievable if, constantly surrounded by the dying, the sick and the poor, she never doubted God’s existence. How many Christians have wondered why God lets horrible things happen to good people or even bad people? That doesn’t make them “bad” Christians. We are all just trying to quantify and understand something that cannot be explained.
Mother Theresa herself understood the potential evils of these letters being publicly released without realizing the ways it could help those struggling with their faith. She had requested all her letters and journals be destroyed upon her death, but her church overrode her request. Obviously, the church, as I do, saw their potential for helping doubting Christians.
A professor at KU once told me, “We will never know if there is a God until we die. You can spend your whole life believing there is and working towards heaven, and if you’re wrong, you’re disappointed. Or, you can believe that this is all you get and only live for yourself, and if you’re wrong, you end up in hell for eternity. It’s obvious what the best bet is.”
Even though she had her doubts, Mother Theresa merely took the best bet. I hope it panned out for her and that it will for me as well.
Gentry is a Kansas City junior in English and pre-medicine.
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Comments
Gentry: Mother Theresa’s reputation being needlessly attacked
Here's a nice reader for you: http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Practice/dp/185984054X
Gentry: Mother Theresa’s reputation being needlessly attacked
Dear "Mother" didn't realize that by living with compassion and passion she had inculcated the holy spirit that communes with those with nothing else to lose but the spirit of their soul. She had her Christ's Passio uring those years. That passion of agony she faced was the un-marketed devotion that Christ demonstrated in bringing at-one-ment and redemption to those he spoke of at the Sermon on the Mount. To seek the miracles or "visitation" in any other form is to hold the fallacy held by the "Tempter" in the Wilderness wehn he offered Christ the Kingdoms of Temporality or when the people asked him to produce signs and miracles.
The miracles occur in the joint compassion and passion shared between entities. The energy from that sharing raises cognition and preconceptions to another level of expereince that makes one aware of the phenomena know as "miracles".
Lucifers Heretic
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