Time: And they should love Jesus too?
Mother Teresa: Naturally, if they want peace, if they want joy, let them find Jesus. If people become better Hindus, better Moslems, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there. They come closer and closer to God. When they come closer, they have to choose.
Your conclusion: Poor thing things [thinks?]all gods are the same..so they get closer to their false gods that will never save
The quote without your emphases:
Time: And they should love Jesus too?
Mother Teresa: Naturally, if they want peace, if they want joy, let them find Jesus. If people become better Hindus, better Moslems, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there. They come closer and closer to God. When they come closer, they have to choose.
Now let's look at what it says: First she says "If they want peace, if they want joy, let them find Jesus."
THis does NOT mean that all religions are the same. If she thought that WHY would she say, ... let them find Jesus"? Wouldn't she say just let them practice their religion whatever it is?
Her If they want peace, if they want joy, let them find Jesus cannot be easily reconciled with your forced interpretation. To get your interpretation one has to start with the edited version, probably produced by envious liars, and then be too proud to read the text and to see what it says.
WHY say "let them find Jesus," if she doesn't think Jesus is important? HOW can you say she thinks all gods are the same when she mentions only one as the answer to seeking for joy and peace?
That's enough to show that your construction does not suit the interview and that you have to reserve color for part of the quote to draw attention away from the part that shows that she thinks that to find Jesus is to find joy and peace.
Now, like it or not, the fact is that the average 'religious' person neither knows nor understands his religion very well. That means, as a rule, that they do not recognize either the good in it or the bad.
So the average Muslim can call Allah "The Merciful, the All-Compassionate" and never trouble himself with the unmerciful and, indeed, unjust treatment of women in his religion. If he becomes a "better" Muslim, he is more likely to confront the internal contradiction of Islam, it's destruction of thought, freedom, and life. If he stays asleep, that won't happen. No real choice has been made, and it can scarcely be made.
Similarly with the intolerable caste system of Hinduism. And likewise with the discontinuuity between the Mahayana and Vajrayana emphases on bodhicitta and on compassion and the disgraceful behavior of many Vajrayana adepts (at least in the US) and the usual toleration of sexual, social, and governmental injustice in Buddhist countries. Becoming a better Buddhist or Hindu will force a confrontation with these discontinuities. And then, as Mother Teresa says, the person will have to choose.
Being in a position to choose, seeing more clearly what choice must be made is a good.
And it is patently absurd both from common sense and from Scripture to suggest that every Christian must always preach. What are you doing having a secular job if what you say is true? Why aren't you out on the street corner?
Is it really yours idea that one can only fulfill one's Christian call by explicit verbal discourse and evangelizing?
How then will Christians eat? How study? Who will build the roads, bridges, and houses? Who will farm?
Indeed, who will pray if all that must be done is verbal evangelizing. Your argument is incoherent.
AND it also relies on selective textual citation from Scripture as well as from the words of Mother Teresa. Especially significant is the next question in the Romans 10 quote: and how can they preach UNLESS THEY ARE SENT [that is "apostled"]?
And Ephesians 4: SOME (not all] should be prophets, SOME evangelists, SOME pastors and teachers?
Yet you say that what she does is wrong. Did Paul mean these lists to be exhaustive? That's absurd. Your criticism of her service to the poorest is essentially that it is not some other ministry.
Mark 16:14-16 IN CONTEXT (something some of our opponents might try sometime -- emphasis added):
14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they sat at table; and he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.
15 And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.
16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
It is NOT to every one in the Church that this mission of preaching the Gospel is given. it is to the Apostles.
So this provides the proper context for understanding Mother Teresa's sense of mission: She says that for her order works of love are the best evangelical means. Clearly as a Dominican I would not say they are objectively the best. and Neither she nor I would say our order's way is THE one and only way.
You want every part of the body to be the mouth. That is not the Scriptural description of the Church.
I think there's one more ... oh yes:
Heathens love and do good and kind works as well
Well, as a matter of fact, not so much, not in the history of the world. Of all the non-Christian Kings, only Ashoka the Buddhist is a shining example of a man given to good works and charity on a large scale. When the Gospel began to be preached, caring for the disabled, the alone, the sick, the dying, the abandoned neonate was just not a value. It was the Christians who took in the exposed child and derogated abortion. It was they who organized care of widows. And later they built universities unlike anything anywhere in the world.
It was Christians who developed the notions of international law and of the inherent rights of man. There were approximations of some of these things around the world. The Chinese civil service system is impressive. But it was formalized beyond usefulness and not so much for the service of the people as for the service of the government and the emperor.
And while the Chinese have an interesting and ancient system of medicine, the world sent medical students to Christian lands to study medicine, science, administration, all the underpinnings of charity on a large scale, while in the brief 'flowering' so-called of Islam the two faylasuf, Averroes and Avicenna, who had a prayer of encouraging that kind of thought that might have mitigated and humanized Islam a little were mostly in trouble for being unIslamic.
Aside from the silliness of criticizing a nurse because she is not a preacher, there is the evident (to someone who doesn't begin with the proposition "Catholics must be wrong") there is subtlety in, so to speak, 'leading' with spectacular sacrifice and good works:
There is no shortage in Calcutta of soi-disant holy men with some bogus gospel of redemption. They all seek to aggrandize, possible to enrich, themselves by amassing disciples. Indians have their sleeves plucked hourly by advocates of some new message, some new 'Way'.
So here comes someone who asks for nothing but the opportunity and the means to show some kindness to the utterly abandoned. She shows with deeds what love is. Of COURSE, at some point, the evangelizing must be 'perfected' with content. But while you may criticize the guy who pours the concrete foundation because he is not shingling the non-existent roof, I will admire his work and build upon it.
It is as I said, your side says works do not save, and then damns Mother Teresa because her works do not meet your standard. And, worse than that, your side foolishly thinks that building a house does not include laying a foundation, and so reserves praise for the finish carpenters and denies it to the masons and framers.
The presented criticism of this excerpt from an interview is responsibly tied neither to the text nor to the task of proclaiming the Gospel in the real world. And the trivialization, by misinterpretation and decontextualization of Mother Teresa's words simply does not stand up to examination. The whole argument depends on careless reading of Scripture and on petitio principii, and on a failure to appreciate what Paul says about the diversity of gifts.
I have to go reload my magazines. There are more targets in your post than I have cartridges.
That is pathetic MD.
What is pathetic is reading right past her evident humility and devotion to Jesus to cherry pick quotes amenable to being interpreted as though she thought all religions were equally good.
Ignorance does not save anyone..if it did we would not send missionaries . It was HER stated job to be a missionary..that means she should have explained the falseness of their faith and proclaimed the gospel
Ignorance is no excuse before the throne of God
What is pathetic is reading right past her evident humility and devotion to Jesus to cherry pick quotes amenable to being interpreted as though she thought all religions were equally good.
It is not humility to believe that your good works substitute for the gospel and the work of Christ..that is nothing but pride.
Yet she claims she was a missionary...What missionary doesn't proclaim the Gospel???
It is NOT to every one in the Church that this mission of preaching the Gospel is given. it is to the Apostles.
Talk about cherry picking verses...You neglected to cherry pick this one written to a non Apostle;
2Ti 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
What is pathetic is reading right past her evident humility and devotion to Jesus to cherry pick quotes amenable to being interpreted as though she thought all religions were equally good.
Read it...That's pretty much what she said...She appeared to say that she liked her religion better but the others were good...She liked those religions as well...
But one has to wonder; her mission appears to have been to comfort the flesh but completely ignore the condition of and destiny of the souls of these poor pagans...
To me, an odd thing for someone who calls themselves a Christian...