Reading Mother Teresa--Faith and doubt

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, 

the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 

Some historians claim that the unparalleled success of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies in this new world, way back in early 17th century, is directly attributable to the people’s unsullied conviction that they were—as none other—the children of God and that their coming to this new land was nothing less than their obedience to his call. At Plymouth, half the immigrants were dead when the first spring came around, but what stayed convincingly alive though all that horror was their faith that the Creator of Heaven and Earth was behind them all the way.

Conviction creates results. The little engine that could, did. If you honestly don’t believe you can win the 1600 meters, you may as well hike back up in the stands. Today, the Rev. Robert Schuller is gone, but for decades he chatted with Presidents and princes largely because of the creed he carried, defiantly, into life itself—the sheer power of positive thinking. Sadly, such faith didn't keep him out of the Home.

No matter—the man’s gospel is at least half-truth, and nothing less than the American dream is ready witness. Look at the young Ben Franklin, poor as a church mouse, walking into Philadelphia with little more than a couple of dimes. Look at Barack Obama, son of a single mom who was, more often than not, on the other side of the world when he was a kid. Yet her son somehow graduates from Harvard Law and becomes the first African-American President of these United States. The American Dream is molded from faith, conviction.

The very soul of Mother Teresa’s plea to start a new mission enterprise on the streets of Calcutta was communication she claimed to receive from none other than Jesus, who told her, in no uncertain terms, to “come be my light” in “the holes of the poor.”

Here’s the way her biographer summarizes it: “Mother Teresa’s certitude of being called by God and her desire to do His will gave her the courage to persist.” And more, “To ignore or deny this call would make her guilty before God.”

Such certitude is a marvelous blessing. It’s enabling, a divine resource to which nothing can compare. Conviction—certitude—is the very engine of our actions. So convinced was she of her Savior’s voice that non-compliance was not an alternative. What we’d like to say is that she gained her dream because she simply couldn’t not do so.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but envy, in a way, that kind of certitude, even though I doubt—there’s the word, doubt—I’ll ever have it. Let’s just say it again—certitude is a marvelous blessing.

But so is cynicism. So is doubt.

There were moments in Mother Teresa’s life when her conviction of God’s voice went far beyond whatever doubt she might have harbored. In the year that followed those first commands she heard from none other than Christ himself, a year in which her immense conviction grew exponentially, she must have felt herself almost impossibly close to God.

But then, there were also moments when she was surely convicted that God had decided that He simply wasn’t speaking to her, that He’d abandoned her; there were moments, many of them, when she heard no voice at all, when the all she could see before her was the empty darkness.

There’s a certain beauty in those extremes—the ecstasy and the agony. There’s a undeniable humanness that, as far as I’m concerned, makes Mother Teresa even more of a saint. She was, after all, not all that far from you or me or the guy on the bus in front of us.

What separates her from just about anyone is her faith, but what makes her undeniably human is the fact that that immense and billowing faith, that foundational faith that enabled her to accomplish everything she believed Jesus Christ had commanded of her, sometimes also abandoned her, left her in tears of doubt and darkness. We’ll see much more now. Beware.

Still, all that darkness makes her conviction, at least to me, even more of a blessing.