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Topic: Mother Theresa questioned her faith?
| Author | Message |
| questoo1 | Posted – 8/24/2007 11:35:54 AM | show profile WTF?? Is it that slow a news week or are we just so insane about religion. Give me an f'ing break! |
| catlondon | Posted – 8/24/2007 12:02:58 PM | show profile I actually just read the Time article and thought it was pretty interesting. There a new book of her letters coming out and they chronicle her struggles with her faith--for about 50 years. She presented such a public face of faithfulness, that I found her anguish and searching rather compelling. Christopher Hitchens is, of course, overjoyed to be proven "right" about God and religion by Mother Theresa of all people. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 8/24/2007 12:10:23 PM | show profile Well, would you rather read about Paris, Brittney, Nicole, or Lindsay? I'd take a story about Mother Theresa any day. I also find her more human when she questions, wonders, anguishes. That's what we humans do. |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 8/24/2007 12:13:56 PM | show profile Just a bit to much insanity. I thought the Mother T thing was quite interesting especially after listening to Falwell flap his mouth all over the place last night. The church will just pawn her doubts off as a test from God. What we need is a good shot of liberal teaching. Any time I hear all of this bloated nonsense I want to speak with a bug and ask it after downing an equally repugnant critter if it thought it was saved. |
| chucho | Posted – 8/24/2007 12:37:43 PM | show profile "The silence and the emptiness (of the love of Christ) is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear the tongue moves (in prayer) but does not speak . . . I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God ? tender, personal love . . . If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" I couldn't agree more. Especially since she spent so much of her public time opposing contraception, thus supporting an exacerbation of the deplorable human misery that caused her to doubt the existence of God in the first place. |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 8/24/2007 12:44:04 PM | show profile You see Chucho this is what fouls the Christian right... Three topics - abortion - (few abopt.)..gay marriage - (none of their business).. and contraception ..( would rather have their kids infected with a highly toxic parasite). After that, it's the certainty that living a devout Republican life God will open the doors to everlasting nirvana and lift you out of this horrible world and you might be able to take a few stocks with you. |
| catlondon | Posted – 8/24/2007 4:33:01 PM | show profile Actually, I didn't see anything in the article that mentioned it was the deplorable human misery in which she toiled that caused her to doubt her faith. It very personal and not related to her mission field. You're projecting your own beliefs, I think. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 8/25/2007 12:46:53 AM | show profile Good for her. I admire her even more now. God , that woman was a saint. |
| chucho | Posted – 8/25/2007 8:02:53 AM | show profile Cat - I'm projecting my own opinion, not beliefs. There's nothing unusual about people who immerse themselves in human misery to have doubts about their faith. Many books have been written about reconciling Jewish faith considering the horrors of the Holocaust -- as in, if God is merciful why were 7 million people sent to the gas chambers? There's nothing subversive or controversial about this idea, and it certainly provides a convincing theory (to me, anyway) for why Mother Theresa and others throughout history have crises of faith. It's easier to believe in God if you drive a minivan to your local Megachurch in Overland Park, Kansas than it might be to, say, spend a lifetime among the untouchables of Calcutta. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 8/26/2007 1:58:32 AM | show profile That's the difference between the OT and the NT. Jesus' battle in the Garden of Gesthemane is what this is all about. Faith in goodness depite periods of ultimate darkness. The realization that THIS is pure faith. The Holocaust, it could be argued, was the ultimate test in faith of goodness on this earth--or at leastone ultimate test (I'm sure there are many in many civilizations that many religions East and West point to as the test of faith , faith in goodness. Mother Teresa is just an example of how goodness does in fact prevail --despite--in spite of, because of and especially because of ultimate hopeless darkness and evil. Not because of heaven and somesuchshit. But simply because goodness wins out. Her goodness won out. That is humankind's hope. |
| chucho | Posted – 8/26/2007 4:57:17 AM | show profile Of course, some people are given much harder tests than others. I suppose this inequity is part of God's mysterious plans, right? Tell that to somebody born with some awful birth defect and if they're of right mind they'll tell you to piss off with your spiritual justifications for this inequity. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 8/26/2007 5:04:24 AM | show profile Doubting or depression are not unheard of among saints and Saints. Or people in the Bible for that matter. Jonah comes to mind, and David, and Thomas and Peter and Paul. Also, in addition to environmental sources for depression or doubt (I sure couldn't do calcutta) Mother Teresa could very well have had undiagnosed depression, considering the somewhat common and outdated idea among Christian groups (and others, especially from older generations) that depression is a faith problem and not a medical one. I'm guessing she probably felt unable to articulate her doubts and depression (I think she had both) because people expected a certain unwavering resilience and she didn't want to let them or herself down. Had she felt freer to express it, it probably would have weighed far less heavily on her -- and she would have gotten solace and reassurance and maybe even medical help from others who otherwise never guessed. I cut her a great deal of slack for continuing with what she knew to be right for her even though she didn't feel like it. Also, who among us doesn't know what it's like to paste a smile on and say "Fine" when asked how you're doing, when the opposite is true? We have our reasons .... Also, as a person of faith, (Protestant, not Catholic) I don't knock your lack of belief in an intolerant manner. I certainly don't agree with her stance on contraception, for example. I think it's a very important step, moreso if you don't like things like abortions and unwed mothers and child poverty and poverty in general, as the Catholic church professes to. But down through history, just about every group you can think of (religious or otherwise) has shown significant batches of intolerance. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 8/26/2007 5:04:49 AM | show profile Oh, and by the way, I'm FINE. ;) |
| catlondon | Posted – 8/26/2007 4:52:33 PM | show profile My comment, based solely on the excerpts I read in the article, which I've now read twice, is that Mother Theresa spiritual abyss had nothing to do with the greater human condition. It was not the daily misery of Calcutta that sent her into a downward spiral, but her personal relationship with God. She writes as if her husband has left her for another woman and won't return her calls. So that leaves me unsure why people are connecting two unrelated things--people who feel that human misery makes one question God, and Mother Theresa, who questions God/Jesus because she feels they are no longer speaking directly to her. |
| Katie | Posted – 8/26/2007 5:11:34 PM | show profile If she was having such a hard time, why didn't she just get out, have a life and continue her work? |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 8/26/2007 5:47:33 PM | show profile Hit a disco? |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 8/26/2007 8:47:42 PM | show profile There are a very small number of people who have had life changing moments in which they experienced one-ness with God and the universe. Maybe she never had this kind of experience herself, knew of others who had, and wondered why not her? Seems like a normal reaction to me... |
| seeattleme | Posted – 8/26/2007 10:25:34 PM | show profile Yes, peoplea re given different tests. SOme tests they bring upon themselves, through bad choices and poor faith, selfishness (or not enough self love), either way. SOme of us fuck life up for other people and never pay for it, or pay for it later (depending on what religion you believe in, you rot in the ground, rot in hell, or come back as a headlice). Or people just remember you for the rest of their lives, long after you die, as a shit (for me, that's the ultimate hell). Some people take birth defects in stride. To them, it's nothing. SOme people take poverty in stride. Some people can't handle having to pay their own bills or raise their own children without sending them to rich summer camp every year. It sucks. But whatever our circumstances, the ability to be good and do good and find good despite them really is your only attractive option. That or, what? Offing yourself? Being miserable and self-piteous? |
| chucho | Posted – 8/27/2007 9:29:42 AM | show profile So, granite girl, so what you're saying is that the options for somebody who is given a much harder test in life than Paris Hilton is: kill yourself or ask Jesus into you heart? I find the concept of Christian charity to be self-serving: the disadvantaged are on this earth to make Christians feel batter and earn Brownie points with God by having pity on them, giving them food (and Bibles), and abstinence-only talking points? Blah. Give me Moral Humanism ANY day of the week and I shall give my charity to OxFam, thank you very much. In other words: there are alternatives to kill yourself or put your faith in God. Those are false choices. Anyone who has been given a much harder test from the deity with a penis in the sky can "take it in stride" without dogmatic belief in magic. |
