“Mother Teresa Did Not Feel Christ’s Presence for Last Half of
Her Life, Letters Reveal”
Big deal.
She got her “marching orders” and stayed the course.
She got no “counter-manding orders” and stayed “on mission”.
GOOD for her!!!
Personally, I’m comforted when some evangelist/preacher/pastor admits
to never having “heard G-d (personally) talking to them”.
One of the prominent examples I can recall is Charles (Chuck) Swindoll.
And yet he remains faithful and engaged into practicing and promoting
the Christian vision.
Maybe that’s the sort of conduct to be expected from a fellow that
graduated from divinity school...then had to do a hitch in the US Marine Corps!
http://www.insight.org
"In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis tells the story of a man who didn’t think he should have to bother learning theology because he’d had some powerful personal experiences of God. Lewis acknowledges that such experiences may have profound value. Such a person, he says, may claim to know God the way someone who spends a lot of time at the beach may claim to know the ocean. But if you want to cross the ocean, a map would be more helpful than your personal memories of the beach, and if you want to journey toward a deeper knowledge of God, theology is a sort of map that will help you more than personal experience alone. Then Lewis makes the point that a map of the ocean is not opposed to experience but is rather based on the composite experience of hundreds of people, and Christian theology is not opposed to experience but is rather based on the composite experience of thousands of people. In the same way, the academic life builds on the experience of tens of thousands of people who have gone before us in any given discipline — people who have thought and written and experimented. We don’t withdraw from experience when we step into the academic world, but we do draw back into a broader view, so that we see not just our own perspective but the perspective of many thinking people all at once."
Dr. Laura Smit
Calvin College