The MT life - me and Mother T

**Daniel Dennett in his latest book Breaking the Spell makes the distinction between belief in god and belief in the belief in god. The former accepts the existence of an actual being who controls the universe and with whom one can interact through prayer, worship and obedience to that being’s commands. The latter indicates a frame of mind that holds that it is right, practical or otherwise necessary to profess and/or act as though such a being exists.

It’s obvious that much good has been done by those who profess belief either way. But Mother Teresa appears to be one of those in the latter camp. Her just released journals "Come Be My Light" chronicle deep inner conflicts, many of which were expressed to her superiors or confessors over the course of fifty years.

Some may see her angst as an indication of faith, as does this writer for the Christian Science Monitor:

Mother Teresa may have believed she had no faith, but was not her persistence an act of extreme faith? And is it not faith in something greater than themselves that sustained leaders, such as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. King, as they carried out their missions?

The answer has to be: NO. Faith, according to the Bible, is "the evidence of things not seen." Mother Teresa worked on without evidence. People can persist with actions because they believe the actions are worth the darkness of doubt. Obviously she cared deeply about suffering humanity and tried to do something tangible about it. But none of it indicates faith in the existence of something for which there is no evidence, whether external or internal. The goodness of the work itself supplies enough motivation in people of strong will and deep dedication.

The revelations of Mother Teresa’s lonely journey resonate with some of my own experiences. Though I never accomplished anything on the magnitude of her achievements, I tried to help people who were suffering, and I thought I could best do it through the practice of Christian Science. In that microscopically small community I was regarded as someone who had achieved a certain success. I was a spiritual healing practitioner, a teacher of same, a frequently published writer in the denomination's magazines and websites, and a somewhat popular (in the church community) lecturer on the subject. I was considered to be a person of some deep understanding of that belief system.

I persisted in that belief and work for over thirty years. I was a proponent, defender and exemplar of its truth and effectiveness because I believed it supplied the most reasonable explanation of reality. What I hadn’t realized all that time, however, is that I had never actually questioned the basis of all religions: belief in the existence of a supreme being. This was a belief that went all the way back to my upbringing in the Catholic community. Once I had the opportunity and occasion to reflect on what I had committed a good chunk of my life to, I investigated the subject with the help of Messrs. Dennett, Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, et. al. Over the course of about a year, I saw that the existence of a spiritual dimension and spiritual beings, supreme and otherwise, is entirely unnecessary. While I am happy and satisfied with the world as it now appears to me without the veil of “faith,” probably like Mother Teresa I will die knowing that whatever good I accomplished was in spite of and not because my faith. No hospitals, no clinics, no interesting memoirs - just a nice guy trying to do good while a baseless metaphysics got the credit.