“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” (Mother Teresa)
A few years ago the journal writings of Mother Teresa were released. Within the pages of her journal, Mother Teresa admitted that there were years of darkness where she did not feel God’s presence in her life. This confession surprised many who knew Mother Teresa personally as well as those who admired her from a far. In the personal writings, she confesses that despite being a cheery person she “lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain.” Her darkness lasted for ten years initially. The darkness was eventually broken upon events surrounding the death of Pope Pius XII. The light, however, was short lived and she returned to a constant state of feeling disconnected from God after just five weeks. The darkness remained for the remainder of her life, nearly 40 years.
Not surprisingly, the media blitz surrounding the release of Mother Teresa’s personal writings gave ammunition to atheists and religious skeptics. But, more specifically to my own journey, it also caused frustration for believers. Many Christians seemed shocked that such a dedicated disciple could struggle with darkness, doubt, and spiritual frustration. People couldn’t understand how someone could live so faithfully, with such dedication, and accomplish so much for the Kingdom of God could also spend the majority of her life unsure of God’s presence. It was even occasionally suggested that perhaps in the midst of Mother Teresa’s service she neglected to care for her own spiritual needs. Perhaps her struggle, they would argue, was because of the spiritual discipleship she lacked. Regardless, for many her struggle will always be linked to her service with an air of criticism. As I reflect on what her life must have been like I can’t help but understand her frustration. She sought out new ground in ministry to some of the most cast aside people in the world. Her ministry was not to prepare them for ways that God would use them or work in the Kingdom, but to hold them as they would die. With little support from the church for the first part of her ministry she sat with the most broken, diseased, and lost people on the planet with nothing more to offer them than last hand accommodations as they passed from this life to the next. What catches my attention isn’t that she questioned God, who wouldn’t, but that despite her spiritual angst she served diligently with grace and faithfulness.
A couple of thousand years earlier the same struggle haunted another disciple’s legacy. He was, to the best our knowledge, a faithful servant of Christ for years. He walked side by side with Christ serving sacrificially. He ministered to people with enthusiasm and dedication. He likely performed great miracles along with the other disciples and suffered the same criticism and abuse as the other disciples as well. His love for Christ, as best as we can ascertain from scripture, was authentic and genuine. As a disciple, he was marked as one of Jesus’ inner circle of twelve. After Christ’s crucifixion he continued his allegiance to the ministry of Christ as he banded together with the other disciples to seek guidance and comfort in a time of confusion and mystery. And after the resurrection he went on to serve Christ and the Church the rest of his life with the same dedication as he did when Christ led them in person. But at a moment of intense personal spiritual pain and corporate spiritual confusion he dared to make a statement that labeled him a doubter for the rest of history. Thomas, now known as Doubting Thomas, stated, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." (John 20:25) Based on this short story there is no reason to assume that Thomas struggled with doubt regularly. All we know is that on this one occasion, an occasion that was as reasonable as anyone to doubt God, Thomas simply stated that he needed to see it to believe it. Was Thomas displaying great faith with this statement? Probably not. But was he displaying a great lack of faith? Not necessarily. He simply was acknowledging his own limitations. Thomas hadn’t abandoned the Christian ministry. He hadn’t rejected Christ. He just was not emotionally, mentally, or spiritually capable at that moment to deal with believing that Christ was alive only to possibly later find out that he wasn’t. It is possible, however, that doubt was in fact an ongoing struggle for Thomas. Would that mean that Thomas was somehow less dedicated to Christ or that his service is any less meaningful? Thomas, perhaps, did constantly struggle with belief. He might very well have not been as spiritual or mystical as his disciple counterparts. But despite this possible struggle with doubt there would no reason to believe that he was less faithful in his service. His faith was simply demonstrated in a different way than it was for others. For Thomas, as it was for Mother Teresa, his faith was demonstrated in his ability to acknowledge his spiritual frustration and then put it aside when God called him to service.
Neither Mother Teresa’s nor Thomas’s ministry appear to be based on the usual foundations of ministry. Both Mother Teresa and Thomas had a strong religious heritage that gave them much guidance initially, but neither appears to have been highly religious people. Thomas, like all of the disciples, broke from the religious system of the day to follow Christ. Mother Teresa, while remaining connected to the church, broke from the traditional roles of the time to serve people intimately. Both Mother Teresa and Thomas appear to be spiritual in the sense they were very aware of a greater reality and were heavily influenced by that unseen reality, but neither was all that mystical or emotional in their response to how they related to God. Rather, they both approached ministry and personal relationship with God as centered in a higher calling, but lived in a natural world. Their accomplishments were outstanding, but possibly more meaningful to me was that their struggles were real. They refused to become jaded by their struggles and questions, but instead addressed them for what they were. They sought greater insight and possibly felt a very real sense of constant spiritual pain, but were never defined by their struggles, allowing Christ to be their reality.
Contemporary Christianity appears to have made doubt and faith mutually exclusive, suggesting that those who have struggles with believing in God or the meaning of truth lack faith. I disagree with this conclusion. As a person who struggles with intellectual questions about God, Jesus, truth, and evil, I still consider myself a disciple fully committed to Christ. Martin Luther King Jr. in his book Strength to Love discusses how there are two forms of belief: an intellectual form and one that is comes from the core of who we are. Intellectual knowledge would include knowing that God is good and present. To know in your mind who God is will give you confidence. But simply knowing him in your mind isn’t the type of knowledge that God desires for us to have of Him. He desires for us to know Him at the core of who we are. It means that a real knowledge of God is more than simply knowing the right answers. In the same way, struggling with God intellectually or sensationally is just as unimportant. Questions arise and doubts linger, but when we know God at the core of whom we are then we are still in communion with Him. Do I wish that I was given the gift of faith? Definitely! Do I believe that there is a deeper purpose for my struggle? Without a doubt (so to speak). But despite my longing for deeper intimacy with Christ or what role my doubt my play in the kingdom, it is who I am.
This part of me continues to frustrate me, but there was a time not too long ago when it was so frustrating to me that I often questioned my own salvation. The doubt surrounding my frustration was not unfounded. There were, in fact, many Christians around me and many sermons about what we should expect from a dynamic relationship with God that would blatantly challenge how I perceived my salvation. Christianity, as I experienced it for the majority of my life, didn’t leave much room for doubt, struggle, and sin. There was plenty of talk about these things and their role in spiritual formation, but were only supposed to be talked about in the past tense. As in, “I used to struggle with doubt until I let that go.” However, since emerging into a new faith paradigm I have been able to reconcile my struggles with doubt with a deep love for Christ and even an assurance of a deeper faith. As an emerging Christian I am free to experience God without a personal agenda for how it is to feel or what I am supposed to think. I am free to embrace the teachings of Paul realizing that God is renewing my mind and that God is making me a new creation. I don’t have to be discouraged by what the institution defines as a renewed mind or a new creation. I can be who I am while becoming who God is making me to be. I am free to interact with God authentically and honestly. And like two-thirds of the Psalms, I can express my struggles of God’s presence and providence, I can engage God with frustration and anger, and I can lament my spiritual angst all with the knowledge that I am in a deeper intimacy with God when I do so.
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