THE UNFALSIFIABLE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF
Mother Teresa's Loss of Faith
Stes de Necker
Few people
are aware of the decades-long crisis of faith in the life of Agnes Bojaxhiu,
better known as Mother Teresa.
A biography, Come
Be My Light, consists of numerous letters Teresa exchanged with her church
superiors. These letters reveal that for the last fifty years of her
life, she felt as if God had withdrawn his presence from her and would not
respond to her prayers.
Unable to
feel any hint of God’s existence – “neither in her heart or in the Eucharist”,
according to Brian Kolodiejchuk, the book’s editor – she lived in a permanent
state of silent misery and despair.
Some excerpts from Teresa’s letters reveal
just how tormented she was:
“I call, I cling, I want — and there
is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone … Where
is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness &
darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare
not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me
suffer untold agony.”
“So many unanswered questions live
within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — 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 &
hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness
& coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”
This crisis of
faith began in 1946, the same year that she began her evangelistic work among
the poor in Kolkata, and continued unabated, except for a few weeks in 1958,
until her death in 1997.
The church
assigned a long series of priests and bishops to act as her confessors, trying
to help her recover her faith, but all of them ultimately met with failure.
Despite her
intense inner turmoil, Teresa always kept up a facade of cheerful piety in
public, professing religious sentiments which she did not truly feel. Her letters
reveal that this was a fully conscious act of deception. She called her smile
“a mask”, and wrote privately to a confidant about one public appearance: “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.'”
The inability
to feel God’s presence is a common element of deconversion stories, but as
Teresa’s letters show, it happens in people who remain believers as well.
Of course,
atheists should not be at all surprised by this, since we are well aware that
there is no god there to feel. In the initial ecstasy of conversion, a new
believer may convince themselves that they have felt God’s presence, but after
the exhilaration fades, the sense of presence often goes with it. If this can
happen to a believer as famed as Mother Teresa, it undoubtedly happens to
others as well.
It’s an open
question just how many other theists may be going through similar emotional
agony, struggling in vain to convince themselves that they feel the presence of
God. Almost certainly, these struggles are severely underreported, because
believers are loath to admit them – each one concealing their own torment
because they are convinced they are the only one experiencing it, and thus
contributing to the same misconception among all the others who are feeling the
same thing.
Although her
letters show she considered atheism on more than one occasion, Teresa never
publicly admitted the truth about how she felt. (She asked the church to
destroy her letters, but that request was not granted.)
It seems
that, like many believers, she became so locked into her religion that she
never even considered leaving it to be a live option. Sadly, she is not the
first and will not be the last person to put themselves through this
unnecessary suffering by vainly clinging to false dogma.
This is yet
another of the ways in which unfounded faith ends up causing real pain and
suffering to real people.
Teresa’s
inner suffering was not helped by the Catholic Church. If anything, its
masochistic, pain-glorifying teachings only exacerbated her problem, by
encouraging her to stay and suffer rather than seek a different path where she
might have found happiness.
Some of
Teresa’s confessors told her that her darkness was “reparative” – in other
words, a blessing granted by God that let her experience some of what Jesus
felt while being crucified. As one advisor put it, “It was the redeeming
experience of her life when she realized that the night of her heart was the
special share she had in Jesus’ passion.”
Not only did
these teachings prolong Teresa’s suffering, they further demonstrate the
unfalsifiable nature of religious belief.
When God’s
presence is felt, that is evidence of God’s existence; when God’s presence is not felt,
that is also considered evidence of God’s existence.
“The greatest
disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved,
and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure
for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world
who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little
love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only
a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as
there is a hunger for God.” (Mother Teresa)
These beliefs
are formulated to be perfectly circular, immune to logic.
"People are
often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them
anyway.
If you are
kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind
anyway.
If you are
successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine
enemies.
Succeed anyway.
Succeed anyway.
If you are
honest and sincere people may deceive you.
Be honest and
sincere anyway.
What you
spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.
Create
anyway.
If you find
serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy
anyway.
The good you
do today, will often be forgotten.
Do good
anyway.
Give the best
you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your
best anyway.
In the final
analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never
between you and them anyway."
