"If there be God - please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul..."
"How painful is this unknown pain - I have no Faith."
What does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to be a "Christian"? What does it mean to be "spiritual"? The more I learn, the more I wrestle with other people's thoughts and experiences, the longer I teach and encounter young people who are trying to figure out the answers to these questions...the more I have to say I don't know. The above quotes are from Mother Teresa's recently released letters...intimate expressions of uncertainty and doubt. Mother Teresa! A woman who dedicated her life to the poor and suffering on the streets of Calcutta. A woman who lived out her Catholic belief in the crucified Christ in whom God reveals his solidarity with the poor and oppressed. A woman who is held up as the example of someone who "did something"...who acted upon her beliefs. Who would seem to be the one person who had it all together...no doubts and uncertainties...pouring herself out in service because her faith was rock solid. Come on, if Mother Teresa has doubts...
It's been a crazy few weeks for me at Dordt College. Students are struggling...probably for a lot of reasons. I see my job as a privilege...I get invited into the lives of so many young people. Their joys, their sorrows, their struggles. The last few weeks have been primarily struggles. Students who don't think they are good enough...spiritual enough...who aren't sure if they have faith...if they believe. They don't pray enough, read the Bible enough, "believe" enough. Some of them remind me of the Opus Dei priest in the Da Vinci code...as they talk I can almost hear the cracking of the whip. So what is my great advice? What is my wise council? "Join the club..." I say.
I've been on a kick lately...I often I latch on to a theme and beat the drum for a while. Lately I have been pounding away at our humanity. We are human after all...we are not angels or gnostic spiritual entities. We are human beings...made from the dust of the earth...meant to be a part of this world. "This world is not my home?" B.S. It is my home...and I love it...which is why I truly grieve when people I love die. We are meant to be human...to live in this world the way God intended. Now don't worry, I believe in sin, and depravity. Yes, sin has warped our humanity, and the world is not as it should be. But we are still meant to be human, and we must never forget it.
So what does this have to do with Mother Teresa? Her letters give me comfort. Her letters let me know I am not leading young people astray. Her letters reveal that she too was human. After all, to be human is to doubt. To be human is to read the bible and not get anything out of it. To be human is to not want to pray...and not "feel" anything even if you make yourself do it. To be human is to not want to go to church on a particular Sunday morning, but to do it anyway. I have come to love this little add on..."do it anyway". This is part of being human. This is an important part of "spirituality". Not that we pray, read scripture, or worship when we feel like it (John Henry Newman argues that if we only pray when we feel like it...we will never pray)...but that in the majority of times when we don't...we do it anyway. And that's ok.
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