Mother Theresa's Struggle with Faith

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20440800/

BrianIs AtYou

[Primula Baggins]

Fascinating, Brian. I heard a little about this yesterday.

I'm glad the book is coming out. People of faith are not always, or even often, smugly certain. But that seems to be the widespread impression.

[MithLuin]

I'm glad the article mentioned Therese of Lisieux. Reading the snippets they put here reminded me of what she went through during the sickness that led to her death. I have not been on the sort of spiritual journey which would require explanations, but it really does help to have some understanding of the Dark Night of the Soul when trying to figure out what is happening and why things are changing. Consolations are baby food, but most people would consider visions something that only happen to a very 'advanced' mystic. The loss of that intense, personal feeling is wrenching, but necessary. It helps to have a spiritual director who can walk you through it. I assume there was someone like that in Mother Teresa's life, though I do not know.

[The One Ring]

People of faith are not always, or even often, smugly certain. But that seems to be the widespread impression.

I think that this is because there are so many people who are smugly certain, and it takes the rest of us a bit of journey to understand that they are not the ones who have faith.

It's always reassuring to me to find out that a person has been tortured by doubts about their own belief. What could free will possibly mean to a person who had suffered no doubts?

Jn

[Cerin]

Certainty (feeling sure about the things one believes) doesn't imply smugness. I wish I could understand the association of these two ideas.

I've never understood the derogatory attitude people seem to have to a faith that doesn't include doubt as a major component, or the laudatory attitude people seem to have toward a faith that does include doubt as a major component.

[Alatar]

I think its because Faith without doubt implies that one believes one is right, therefore, by definition all others are wrong, which automatically makes one superior. As such, there is an automatic smugness implied in Faith without doubt, whether intentional or not.

[axordil]

Of course, it probably matters what one has faith IN too. I could have absolute faith in my own error, for example.

[Primula Baggins]

Cerin, there's nothing superior about doubt, but it's very human. Faith not being a matter of reason, it's open to the middle-of-the-night stab of "But what if it's all untrue?" Some people, once they have made up their minds and arrived at a conclusion they consider true, never seem troubled by doubt. They probably have fewer ulcers. But most of the people of faith I know admit to doubt, some to a lot of it. It comes and goes.

Some who don't doubt (or profess not to) are smug about it, dismissing anyone who disagrees with them as stupid or ignorant or inherently evil. Those are the people I was talking about. Some of their number have caused a great deal of violence and suffering throughout history and have given believers in general a lot to overcome—peaceful Muslims held to account for terrorism, Christians held to account for the Inquisition or the Crusades. . . .

[truehobbit]

That still doesn't justify a derogatory attitude (using Cerin's words here) towards someone who has not been prey to those doubts, nor does an absence of doubt justify concluding that the person must be smug or feeling superior, I think.

This reminded me of our recent discussion in the Random thoughts thread, about how people respond negatively to others who are very energetic or successful because they would like to have the same energy but can't find it - I think this is related, in a way.

Of course it is true that doubt is natural and can come to everybody at all times, often out of the blue - but I'd still say that if you don't have problems with it that's just brilliant. While the impression you get is sometimes that the absence of doubt is reprehensible in a way.

[Alatar]

When it comes to matters of Faith, I'd say a lack of doubt is reprehensible. Simply because Faith is about things that are not known, so to have no doubts about something that is not known is naive at best. IMHO.

[Primula Baggins]

People of faith are not always, or even often, smugly certain.

I seem to be in trouble for saying "smug" and "certain" in the same sentence, but please note what the sentence says. The phrase "not smugly certain" does not exclude "certain in a way that is not smug." And in the very next sentence I object to the "widespread impression" that people of faith are smug in their certainty.

I stand by what I said.

[truehobbit]

Alatar, are naive and reprehensible the same, then?

It's up to everybody, of course, to find someone who doesn't doubt naive - that just reflects your personal opinion and judgement - but reprehensible is a different class of condemnation, I think.

Prim, I wasn't objecting to your first post, I quite agree with that one.
I was contradicting your post in response to Cerin, because I agreed with her.

[Faramond]

What could free will possibly mean to a person who had suffered no doubts?

Is doubt a necessary part of free will, then? That does make sense, though I'm not sure if I fully agree.

********************************************

I read a bit about these letters of M. Teresa, and it sure seems to me that what she primarily suffered from wasn't doubt, but an absence of joy. Her faith no longer made her happy. I think the best way to characterize her doubt is that it came from her despair at losing her connection between faith and happiness. In my judgement is wasn't a doubt that came from the extra-rational nature of faith, which is what people are mostly talking about here.

[Frelga]

* sidles in to stand by Prim *

To me, doubt implies that brain has been engaged. It is resolving doubts that makes faith our own instead of just a dull reflection from someone else's light.

It is, of course, possible for a person to wrestle with doubts and come out on the other side with firm convictions. In that case, doubts may not be visible to the casual observer and faith may come across as certainty.

People who blithely believe what they are told without ever questioning it scare me perhaps more than anything else.

[Primula Baggins]

To be completely clear, hobby, I have no objection to the kind of certainty Frelga mentions, that's arrived at by a thought process. I don't have a problem with the other kind of certainty, either. It's using certainty (in any belief or opinion, not just in matters of religion) as a justification for hurting people that I object to. Again, I seem to be getting in trouble for saying something I didn't say.

[Frelga]

I think the best way to characterize her doubt is that it came from her despair at losing her connection between faith and happiness. In my judgement is wasn't a doubt that came from the extra-rational nature of faith, which is what people are mostly talking about here.

I would agree that this is not "extra-rational" although I wonder if ANY faith could be called extra-rational. Or absence of faith, for that matter. Either way, we have to make a leap at some point.

I do think that this loss of joy actually is a non-extra-rational person's doubt. Not everyone processes every input to the logical conclusion.

[Faramond]

It appears I have failed to communicate. I'm not sure how to salvage my point at this time.

[Frelga]

I think I got you, Faramond. As I understood, you saw the posters here as equaling doubt with a logical process where tenets of faith are tested rationally and are passed or failed. And you said that Mother Teresa's "doubts" were of a different nature. Not having read the letters myself, I will not attempt to paraphrase. Am I close? If not, I apologize.

[truehobbit]

You're not getting in trouble, Prim (at least over here).

I'm just saying that I don't understand why one would make the jump from learning that someone is not struggling with doubt to suspecting they are likely to be smug or prone to hurting others. I think it's wrong to suspect something so negative just from the fact that someone isn't beset by doubts.

In replying to Cerin, you seemed to be saying that because doubt is so natural it was understandable that people get suspicious if there is no doubt.

I don't think this is so. Yes, doubt is natural, but, like Cerin, I still don't understand why that should create a negative attitude on people who don't doubt.
That's all I was trying to say.
And that such a negative attitude reminded me of the negative attitude to energetic, successful people we discussed in Random thoughts.

[Faramond]

By extra-rational I meant outside of rationality --- was that unclear, perhaps?

Frelga, that's what I was trying to say, more or less. I'm not exactly saying that posters here are taking doubt to mean faith is logically tested, to be sure. It's more that the doubt they are talking about comes having or not having has its origin in the irrational leap that faith requires.

Mother Teresa may have come to doubt, at times, her leap of faith, but the route she took to that doubt was through her loss of happiness from her faith. That's my impression.