"Honest Doubters"

That was the name for a group of folks with whom I used to meet, back in the old parish ministry days, people who were, as we say, "of the faith", but who yet harbored doubts about a great deal of what the Church and the faith had to say. I was one of them. I've noted here before that, to borrow from Robert Frost, "I have a lover's quarrel with the Church". Still do, in fact.


Perhaps that's the reason I'm so excited about this new book with the deceptively simple title, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light". It's not to be released until next week, Tuesday, I think, but I've read a great deal about it, enough to whet my appetite for a copy. And based on what I know from all the reviews, both positive and negative, it's going to be, as they say, an "important book". It's the publication, for the first time, of the private letters and journals which reveal that in the latter part of her life this "Saint of the Gutter" had lost all touch with her God and her faith. It wasn't so much that she disbelieved as it was a total loss confidence about her relationship with God, a Dark Night of the Soul for this saintly lady who devoted her life to those who were "unwanted, unloved, and uncared for".

Few of us will be able to relate to the level of compassion shown by Mother Teresa, but I expect a good number of us will, either silently or aloud, identify with her questions and doubts. So often we churchers, certainly including myself, fall into the trap of losing our equilibrium between religion and faith, focusing on the things seen of religion and forgetting the things unseen of faith. We do that, of course, because it's ever so much easier to get a handle on the particularities of religion, of dancing angels and pin heads, than it is to wrap your heart around a belief.

One of the times this came up for me every year, in the routine of the calendar, was on Trinity Sunday. I would do anything, ANYTHING, to get out of preaching on Trinity Sunday: schedule a baptism, have Youth Sunday, let the choir do a cantata, even catch a cold, anything but try to verbalize the ineffable. I certainly could and can proclaim the theological party line, and I could and can enthusiastically sing about "God in three persons, blessed Trinity", and I could and can even read that tongue-twister of a Collect (look it up: page 176), but back in the dim dark recesses of the heart was and is the lingering doubt that all these words really said anything.

Nor do I want to pick on the doctrine of the Trinity. There are other doctrines and other doubts. Spend some time, as I've done tonight, reviewing the "Outline of Faith" that's in the back of the Prayer Book (p. 845). Do I believe all that? You bet I do. With all my heart and soul. Do I have some doubts and uncertainties about parts of it? Well, you'd better believe that! And should I meet someone somewhere someday who held no doubts and uncertainties, I'd run for my life. Literally.

Some years back, perhaps 25 or 30 years ago, Mother Teresa was here in Wilmington to receive an award for her life of unselfish devotion to the poor and the oppressed. We all shared our admiration for this lady whose life was such an eloquent testimony to St. James' declaration that "faith without works is dead". Now, years later and reading of her strugles, Mother Teresa has shown us that works without faith is certainly alive and well!

All of which is to say, "Mother Teresa, I hear you!" And to those who would rather I not expose my own doubts, or to those who themselves have never doubted, the "God said it - I believe it - that settles it" crowd, in the kindest way possible I reply, "Deal with it". And then, when I'm finished with it, I'll loan you my copy of "Come Be My Light". But please return it.