Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith

I wanted to post on Time's article about Mother Teresa early last week but got behind. By now, you've probably read about this in other places but I thought it might be interesting to raise the topic here.

If you haven't read the article, here's the gist. Time Magazine's religion writer, David Van Biema has written a piece entitled Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith where he peers into the private doubts and spiritual life of one of great humanitarian icons in the history of the world. Most of the content for Biema's article is based on Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, a newly released book by Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk.

Biema writes:

A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."...Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain...She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God.

Documented examples of Mother Teresa's struggle include the following quotes from her:

Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One.
- Mother Teresa, addressing Jesus in a letter

Biema's article is interesting because he takes the time to carefully note the different responses from both supporters and detractors.

Why did Teresa's communication with Jesus, so vivid and nourishing in the months before the founding of the Missionaries, evaporate so suddenly? Interestingly, secular and religious explanations travel for a while on parallel tracks... Kolodiejchuk finds divine purpose in the fact that Teresa's spiritual spigot went dry just as she prevailed over her church's perceived hesitations and saw a successful way to realize Jesus' call for her. "She was a very strong personality," he suggests. "And a strong personality needs stronger purification" as an antidote to pride... The atheist position is simpler. In 1948, [Christopher] Hitchens ventures, Teresa finally woke up[to the realization that religion was a human fabrication], although she could not admit it. He likens her to die-hard Western communists late in the cold war: "There was a huge amount of cognitive dissonance," he says. "They thought, 'Jesus, the Soviet Union is a failure, [but] I'm not supposed to think that. It means my life is meaningless.' They carried on somehow, but the mainspring was gone. And I think once the mainspring is gone, it cannot be repaired." That, he says, was Teresa.

Of course, Hitchens exposes his atheistic bias and as Christians, we not only disagree with his analysis of Mother Teresa's dilemma, we also strongly oppose his premise.

However, I wonder if this peek into Mother Teresa's private life can serve to teach us anything about the nature and struggle of faith. Since I don't know much about Mother Teresa beyond this Time article, I wouldn't want to venture to judge the quality or authenticity of her faith. Nor do I question the breadth and depth of her humanitarian works performed out of a devotion to her calling. Yet, as I read the article, a few thoughts some to mind:

1. Faith is a gift. Make no mistake about it - true faith in Jesus Christ that brings about soul satisfaction and eternal life is a gift from God. It cannot be manufactured by our emotions or created by cognitive reasoning. In Ephesians 2, Paul reminds us that saving faith comes from God.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast

2. The kind of faith that pleases God and endures through the darkest nights isn't based on what we achieve - "not by works, so that no one can boast". Instead, it is firmly planted in celebrating what Christ achieved on our behalf.

Our acts of righteousness, no matter how sincere, only pay tribute to our pride when they are performed apart from the work of Christ. When this happens, our joy dissipates and we can find ourselves hopeless. And, self abasement does nothing to such an insidious form of pride.

Let me be clear - I'm not implying that this was the source of Mother Teresa's problems. Only that in some way I find myself similarly affected whenever I forget the bounty of mercy I've received from Him. As I've mentioned in a prior post, we must never "serve Christ" as though He needed anything from us. Our service to Him must be marked by a receiving from Him.

3. Unbelief, not doubt, is the enemy of faith. I think there's something "normal" about the doubts that enter our minds from time to time. Yet, in the Bible, it is not doubt that is broadly condemned but unbelief - a turning away from trusting in a holy God, who has revealed Himself as all-powerful, supremely loving and incomparably wise.

4. While I don't know much about Mother Teresa's faith, I know that many Christians over the centuries have suffered from prolonged battles with depression and struggles of faith. Sometimes, what emerges from their struggle is a vivid picture of God's grace. One such person is William Cowper who penned one of my all time favorite hymns - There is a Fountain Filled With Blood.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.
Washed all my sins away, washed all my sins away;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die. And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die; Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.

Perhaps, you get the pure light of the gospel only after you struggle through darkness.