Is Doubt An Anathema To Religious Faith?

Should religious faith be unshakeable? Faith should never be blind, and this implies you cannot have faith without having true knowledge, as Gautam Buddha urged his followers to always ask questions and only believe when you really understand.

In a recent book (consisting of private letters) on Mother Teresa it’s been revealed that she suffered from doubts for long periods and she shared these doubts in her letters to her friends and as confessions. They are termed as periods of darkness where her faith shook and she doubted the existence of God. Of course she was tormented by her thoughts.

In a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand.” [ the TIME link ]

But I think these thoughts are normal. She saw so much misery around her and for how long can one see Jesus among people ridden with wounds of leprosy? For how long can you embrace appalling misery to experience God, especially when you love those miserable people? For how long can you condone God? How do you make sense of all this? And sometimes when you cannot make sense of all this, doubts are natural.

Does this mitigate Mother Teresa’s aura as a spiritual, saintly person? I don’t think so. She could have easily kept her “darkness” wrapped inside her but she didn’t. She shared it with people. She sought answers, and I think that’s what real religion means: to seek answers. Religion doesn’t mean parroting hymns and prayers without understanding them. When you have doubts it means you actively think about your faith and you take it seriously, you respect it and you are concerned about it. Well-meaning doubt makes you a greater person, not a lesser person. In fact most of the religious fanaticism and fundamentalism surfaces when you cease to have religious doubts.

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