Posted on 08/29/2007 8:53:53 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
For the first time in more than 30 years, Mother Teresa graces the cover of Time magazine. But unlike the 1975 cover that hailed her as a living saint, this week’s cover titillatingly trumpets, “The Secret Life of Mother Teresa.” The subtitle declares, “Newly published letters reveal a beloved icon’s 50-year crisis of faith.” NBC led the TV pack with serious questions about her faith.
Those letters, written by Mother Teresa over more than 60 years, form a new book called Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. So what do these letters really reveal? Newsflash: One of the great saints of the 20th century had doubts. At times, she even doubted the existence of God. Imagine that!
Now, to put this in perspective, imagine that for 60 years you waded knee-deep in the gutters of Calcutta to tend to the outcast and the dying. In the midst of unspeakable squalor and human suffering, might you at times not doubt God?
Here’s more news: Mother Teresa struggled with depression. When you wrestle with the devil surrounded by human misery, you might have good cause to be depressed! I know from the years I have spent ministering in prisons. There are many times that you question, “Where’s God?” To be depressed in such situations simply makes you human. To carry on through the depression reveals the hand of God.
Not surprisingly, Mother Teresa’s letters are red meat for the media. And atheists like Christopher Hitchens could not resist ridiculing her dark night of the soul. “She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person,” Hitchens told Time. “Her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith [which] could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself.” Hitchens even compared her to the old communists who realized their lives were meaningless after the Soviet Union collapsed. What rubbish!
And meaningless is the last word you would think of to describe Mother Teresa. To help the poorest of the poor die with dignity was the greatest example of faith, particularly while you are suffering yourself, with doubts and with pain and with depression.
She continued to do the toughest job anyone could possibly do. And she did it to her dying day. Why? As she wrote to her spiritual advisor, she submitted to God. “I accept,” she wrote, “not in my feelings—but with my will, the Will of God—I accept His will.” I came to that realization in my own dark night of the soul a couple of years ago when two of my three kids had cancer.
The very essence of faith, you see, is believing even in the absence of evidence. And it is the only way we can know Christ. We can conclude rationally that God exists, that His Word is true, and that He has revealed Himself. But without that leap of faith, we will never know God personally or accept His will in Christ.
So what do the letters of Mother Teresa reveal? For one, they reveal the true cost of discipleship. To follow Christ is to embrace suffering and the Cross. And, at times, to say with Jesus, “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?”
Certainly Mother Teresa took on the suffering of the world just as her Lord had done. And she demonstrated a kind of faith that few ever experience. But hers is a faith that will be a lasting witness to the world—when Christopher Hitchens and the media critics are long forgotten.
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I read some of this a few weeks ago. Simply astonishing. No doubt in my mind that this soul, Teresa, was a Saint.
Unlike Hitchens and a number of Freepers, Colson gets it.
Every believer has times of doubt, a ‘crisis of faith’.
The fact that Mother Teresa had such moments, only deepens my respect for her, for it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was human. A wonderful person, but after all, only human.
God have mercy on her Soul.
Many Saints struggled with their faith. They were human, after all. Doesn’t surprise me in the least to hear Mother Teresa went through this. She served the poorest of the poor; it must have made her wonder why God allows some people to have to deal with such poverty.
I'm certain He did.
Good article. The shameles MSM is disgusting.
Excellent column. The fact that she persisted in service even while she struggled with doubts is a great testimony. Having faith while your life is going well is easy. One of the great paradoxes of life is that faith is not tested and purified until you are placed in surroundings which cause you to doubt.
She struggled for years, but wrote, “I accept His will.” Extraordinary.
Colson points out that Jesus said from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” There are other biblical examples of such struggles in the minds of God’s servants.
John the Baptist, while he was in prison, sent some of his followers to ask Jesus if He was the messiah. When John had previously baptized Jesus, John testified to his followers that Jesus was the one, and John even heard a voice from heaven declare it. Yet, in the midst of his trials, he began to have doubts.
Job suffered greatly, and his wife and friends were not very helpful in the midst of his trials. He regretted the day he was born, a sign of depression. And yet, he declared, “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
In Psalm 13, David cries out, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
The atheists chortle over Mother Teresa’s letters. But Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” She did that. Paul wrote, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’... For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” So, unbelievers cannot understand God’s ways, nor can they understand people of faith.
In Revelation, Jesus says to the faithful in the church of Philadelphia, “I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name.”
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. (Gal 6:9)
One of the things I like that Mother Theresa said, “If they cut you into little pieces, know that every little piece belongs to Christ.”
Its too late to find my Bible, but isn’t it on the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says something like “Blessed be the poor in spirit, for I will raise them up.”? Growing up I always sorta stopped at the “poor” and figured the poor would get rich someday. But obviously Jesus is talking about those struggling with their faith. I had a person tell me once that “If you are struggling with your faith - thats probably a good thing.” (Growth, perserverence, etc.)
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)
Excellent point.
"To be depressed in such situations simply makes you human. To carry on through the depression reveals the hand of God."
Hey! That's good!
“She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person.”
So is that!
You don't have to believe in God, Hitch, in order for Him to exist!
BUMP !!!
A reporter sees her cleaning the maggots out of a wretched man's wound.
Says he, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars."
Says she: "Neither would I."
Amen!
Big time.
Thank you for your post and the reminder of several examples of holiness. It’s been very painful for me to read the articles and comments on these letters, all the people (some claiming Christianity) who are gloating over the spiritual suffering Mother Teresa experienced.
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