Transparency in faith or in doubt.

September 30, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Dear sister Joan just brought me an article form the September 3 Time magazine about Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel Peace Price Laureate who died ten years ago this month. Apparently she desired that her personal correspondence be destroyed upon her death. Fortunately for us her letters have been saved. They reveal a unnerving testament of doubt, from a woman revered for her service and piety, who agonized for 50 years that she could not sense God’s presence in her life.

“I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony.”  [Mother Teresa, undated prayer to Jesus]

Many of us have trouble deeply grasping that doubt is part of faith, rather than its enemy. Doubt is like the grayish underside of a glossy green leaf, or the proverbial cloud which conceals the silver lining. Twenty centuries have come and gone since the life of Jesus of Nazareth — the man whom his gospelers confidently tell us was not only wholly present to God but in whom God was fully manifest to all. And in all this time of changing, growing, yearning human experience, feeling/knowing the presence of God remains a great black hole for human spirituality. And even the pious seem to slip quickly past that prayer in which Jesus feels God’s abandonment: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mother Teresa founded, in 1948, and devoted her life to the Missionaries of Charity. She is a contemporary symbol of the human yearning for the Divine, and the outpouring of faithful love given in the hope that—somehow—through human charity and compassion God’s presence will fill the void. People will believe because they witness or grasp or sense or feel The Almighty in the midst of the pain, sorrow or emptiness.

Now we must understand a different Mother Teresa than the one we thought we knew: she doubted profoundly. She agonized deeply over the silence of God, the absence of Jesus, almost from the beginning of her ministry in the slums of Calcutta. Yet she remained faithful, serving in the midst of horrible poverty, despair and disease. Like the mythological Sisyphus she continued to push a heavy rock upward against an unmoving mountain of human suffering. For thousands of other people, Mother Teresa herself was a symbol, a heavenly sign, a manifestation that proves Divine Love really rules this world beneath its gritty and sorrowful mask. But in the very midst of being what she believed God wanted her to be, Mother Teresa felt alone.

Trained in theology, I have always thought I should somehow shrug off emotions and feelings because they do not fully convey spiritual truth. Just “feeling” God’s presence is sentimentality, after all. Liturgies and music, candlelight and prayers are so much spiritual “mood making” if there is no reality behind them. Even though I have hoped people would feel God is with them, beside them, behind them, within them, in all that they face in life, feelings alone do not reality make. Is God there for us, really, or are we spiritually whistling in the dark?

In my own life, I have known or sensed the presence of God most fully and deeply and richly through other people. I have met individuals and communities in whom there is radiance, compassion, faithfulness, energy, commitment, calm, and purity which is so overwhelming that I just know that God is with them and in them. Almighty God is not those individuals, but is fully manifest through them. I long to dwell in the midst of a spiritual community which is so completely absorbed in the divine presence that anyone who witnesses the spiritual depth within will waken and will come to faith.

Yet I know perfectly well all this is metaphor. All that I could do to bring this about is nothing more than manipulating spiritual “special effects.” I cannot bring out or reveal God’s presence in us any more than I can trigger an embryonic heart to start beating, or awaken a human mind lost to Alzheimer’s. I cannot live a life so admirable as to merit the Nobel prize, let alone decree that the world shall be at peace and all people shall treat one another with respect.

But, from within my own black hole of spirituality (that pulls from all sources yet gives off very little light), I also know that wherever and whenever I witness even the smallest movement of one human heart toward another, or participate in the awakening of even slightest consciousness —through acts of compassion, forgiveness, will — God is within that: creating it, sustaining it, redeeming it.

Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with them.” — John 14:22–23

A generation ago a mystical Jesuit professor of mine mused about the differences between Christians — those who live for God, those who live with God, and those who live in God. The saintly Mother Teresa spent (gave, used up) her life living for God to alleviate suffering and to show mercy as Christ has taught us to do. It now seems that in spite of all her faithful piety and prayer over a lifetime she was unable to live with God in a spiritual unity like the great mystics of history. Yet I sense that all spirituality is only transparency or availability on our part. We can only open ourselves to God —whether we sense the Divine surrounding us or not. We are unable to know with certainty that we shall live in God, but only that God will be in us when we serve others.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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