Since her death, we have learned that Mother Teresa was not a saint, but merely an individual who cared about the troubles of humanity and chose to do something proactive about it.
Why must she be something more? Why can't a person simply be human and care?
In an effort to canonize Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who devoted much of her life to the poor and down-trodden in Calcutta, India, the Vatican has been looking for miracles associated with the tiny woman from Skopje, Macedonia.
It seems that a priest, who suffered from a rather large kidney stone, found relief from the ailment when he prayed to the deceased nun. He was scheduled for surgery to remove the stone, but he no longer required the surgery, after it mysteriously disappeared.
Is Mother Teresa to be credited for its mysterious departure? Is she truly a saint?
As a secular person, I find it hard to believe that someone, who is dead nonetheless, can impact what happens in the world of the living.
As a religious woman, Mother Teresa, also, found it hard at times to grasp the concept of God's love. In letters to Rev. Michael van der Peet, we see a woman who often felt as if she had been forsaken by the Divine.
I find the spiritual world is beyond my grasp. As a young boy, I found solace in my faith, but as I became older, I found it only complicated my life. It made people reject others, and in the final assessment--from a rather personal perspective--I found that if God does exist then it is in a way that does not benefit me, or humanity, in general.
Perhaps, I find religious belief is rooted in ignorance and rejection of the very essence of nature.
In my opinion if a supernatural being exists, then it is akin to the supernatural being in the movie, Mothman, who extolled the virtue of his existence in a rather simplistic--yet profound--sentence: "How would you explain your existence to a cockroach?"
In other words, when is the last time you explained your existence to a roach? Why would you even care what a roach thought about you? You are superior to it on every level. It can't even understand what you are trying to share with it. You have the power of life and death over it, but you seldom exercise it, except when it gets right in your face. You just do your own thing, and so does it.
But I find myself clinging to the Freudian construct regarding God. God exists as a "father" figure for adults. He seemingly dispenses punishment and praise depending on the amount of goodness, we as humans, extend. (Of course, Sigmund Freud saw religion as a neurosis that impacted the majority of humanity, which made it seemingly acceptable. There is safety in numbers, for sure.)
4 comments:
I find that religion can be a great source of comfort and spiritual guidance to many, myself included.
Religion teaches us how to live a life in which we love and devote ourselves to our friends, our families, and our fellow man.
Sadly, there are many out there who corrupt religious teachings to suit their own political agendas. That is when religion can be a negative thing.
Religion serves as a great comfort to me. I'll admit to you now that my greatest fear in life is death. I'm afraid to die. Sometimes, I won't be able to sleep at night because I find myself thinking about what is to happen to me after I die. I know it sounds a little morbid, but turning to religion has comforted me with the belief that death isn't necessarily the end.
I also have a difficult time understanding people who use religion as a crutch, to compensate for their shortcomings.
I had a friend in high school who applied to be a summer counselor. When she didn't get the job, she didn't mind at all. "That's okay," she said, "God didn't want me to get that job. He has other plans for me." She never once considered the possibility that she wasn't qualified for the job. I think it's dangerous to have a crutch like that. How can you possibly improve your own well-being when you can simply say that it wasn't in God's plan?
Another friend of mine went to nursing school after high school. However, she's going to nursing school because that's what God intended for her to do. It makes me wonder if she even enjoys nursing school! Whenever she's studying for a difficult test, she tells me that she perseveres because it's all for the glory of God.
God should not rule our lives. I believe in something called free will. I don't use God as an excuse when something in my life doesn't turn out the way that I want it to. I only turn to God as a source of comfort and guidance to improve myself spiritually.
Did Mother Theresa really remove that man's kidney stones? The mind is a powerful thing, and perhaps he simply willed the kidney stones to go away through all of his praying. It surely doesn't hurt to throw Mother Theresa in there as well!
I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this, but I felt that I should leave some sort of comment.
I hope you're enjoying your Starbucks coffee! I absolutely love Starbucks, and I drink it whenever I can. My favorite drink is the Java Chip Frappucino. It's delicious! :-)
I completely agree that too many people use their religion as a crutch and ultimately as a self-righteous pedestal from which to judge the sinners of the world by their values.
Believe it or not, I went to a very conservative religious college as an undergraduate student. It is one of the top rated institutions in my state and religiously zealous in its mission statement. Instead of making me a stronger, more dedicated Christian, as they professed, it taught me that God is simply not interested. They were nothing more than money grubbing, small minded individuals, who belittled the rest of the world for not believing as they said they did (note: they were 100% words and 0% actions).
I respect the beliefs of other people, as long as they do not encroach on my own personal rights and beliefs.
It is interesting that you bring up religion as a comfort from death. When I was much younger, I became a Christian out of fear. I went to Bible school one summer, and I was told that if I didn't accept Christ as my personal savior, then I'd suffer eternal damnation in a fiery lake. I was ten. They informed me that Jesus was only moments away from coming back to judge the pure and evil. I cried one night, because seemingly every noise I heard was God coming back to judge me. As an adult, I find it disgusting that they would use fear as their only selling point.
Like you, I worried about death, but I have come to terms with it as a natural progression of life. Just as we are born, we must die. It will be no harder to die, in my opinion, than to be born. It just happens, whether we like it or not. I am not convinced, however, that anything awaits me when I close my eyes for the final time. Moreover, I am more concerned with the legacy that I will leave behind. That, more than anything, has replaced my former fear of death.
I want to be remembered as a decent person who cared about others and did his best to be proactive.
In the end, that is our eternity--how other people remember us.
(By the way, Starbucks has a Java Chip ice cream that is divine! I can eat a whole pint of it in one sitting. Oops! I can't believe I just admitted that.)
It's so interesting to compare and ocntrast our our opinions on religion and death! (Maybe I shouldn't have put an exclamation point there in light of the topic matter.)
There's a quote by Saint Augustine that I have come to admire over the years - "Faith is to believe in what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe."
Religion fills a spiritual need for me, one that addresses my concerns about death. Unlike you, I don't believe that a lasting legacy will necessarily comfort me on my death bed. It's hard for me to accept death as being inevitable. I know that it's a part of life and that it's to be expected, but I cannot bear to know that death is simply the end. I need to know that there is something more after that.
Your undergraduate experiences with religions are interesting. When I was a freshmen, I went to a few meetings on campus hosted by Chi Alpha, a religious gathering.
During one such meeting, there was a speaker, a man who had just returned from Palestine. He told us that he had stayed in the home of a Palestinian woman. When his visit ended, he presented a Bible to her as a gift. She declined, telling him that she only reads the Qur'an for that is her holy book.
Well, I was shocked by what the man said next. He then went on to say that he cried for the woman because she was living a lie, that she was reading a false text. He then told us that we need to show every non-Christian in the world the truth, to spread the gospel so to speak. We need to set them onto the right religion.
I was infuriated! How dare he say that?! Is he saying that the world's 1.5 billion Muslims are wrong? That the world's Hindus and Buddhists are wrong? It upset me more because my mother is Muslim.
I never went to another Chi Alpha meeting after that. I realized that the group was only interested in proselytizing. They had no interest in truly helping our fellow man. There were no trips to homeless shelters to distribute food, no hours spent volunteering at an after-school program. Instead, meetings were spent discussing how to spread the gospel. All words and no actions.
However, I have eventually found myself following Quakerism. It is a progressive, socially inclusive faith that does not proselytize. Indeed, Quakers believe that you simply stumble upon Quakerism. After talking to several Quakers, I realize that that is how many of them came to be Quakers.
Quakers believe that we all possess an inner light, a direct path to God so to speak. We can communicate with Him whenever we need to. As such, there is no middle man in Quakerism: no preachers or pastors or the like. Everyone is their own preacher.
Indeed, a Quaker meeting is most interesting! The pews all face the center of the room, and for an hour, everyone is in quiet meditation, seeking the inner light within them. When you feel so inclined to speak, then you stand up to address the entire congregation. Some people talk about their daily observations, while others begin to sing. I once gave an address on the need to look past religion because in the end, we're all alike, sharing the same hopes and dreams.
There's a Quaker meeting house (not churches) here in Washington. I might go once mid-terms are over next week. They have a special meeting just for gay and lesbian Quakers.
On a lighter note, I didn't know that Starbucks has Java Chip ice cream! I'll definitely have to check it out! Please! I doubt you have to worry about eating a pint of ice cream in one sitting. After all, you're the one that avoids McDonald's whenever you can! ;-)
I never really thought about Quakers, until now. I know it may sound denigrating (and that is not my purpose), but I only know Quaker Oats and that Richard Nixon's mom was a Quaker. (How sad is that of me to admit?)
I suppose I should do more research on the matter, as a result.
I can empathize with your feelings regarding the man who said the Muslim woman was going to hell for not following his belief system. I once heard a man state to a school convocation that his mother was in the deepest pit of hell for not accepting Christ before she died. He spent quite a while on this line of thought. If I had been closer to him, I would have reached out and slapped him silly. In the end, I found him repulsive, so I simply left before hearing the end of his rant.
I know it may sound cliché, but I believe that we can learn from our pasts. In my past, before I was born, I was nothing. I didn't exist. I have a suspicion that the same can be said for when I die. I will not be conscious of the fact that I do not exist on the same plane as before, so it is a futile exercise, for me, to dwell on it now. I accept it is the apex of conceit to believe that we are more than mortal. A mere mortal is all I ever hope--and expect--to be. I can accept my journey as being finite--we are born, we live in less than a flicker on the universe's timeline, and then we die.
We are unique creatures in that we can ponder the past, present and future. I simply elect to contemplate my future for an earthly existence. I accept that when I die this crazy journey will come to an end.
The epitaph on my stone can be simply, "My story is written. I am neither happy nor sad about it."
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