Outlaw Christian: Finding Authentic FaithExemplo

Mother Teresa, Outlaw Christian?

The notion that people with authentic faith do not question the Bible or God’s goodness and justice is very ingrained within us. I am sure you consider Mother Teresa a paragon of faith, but do you know that even Mother Teresa radically questioned God and was filled with doubts? You perhaps do not know this, because Mother Teresa’s private journals and letters went unpublished until 2007, a decade after her death, when finally they were released in Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta. Mother Teresa herself expressed a fear of the letters ever being made public.

That Mother Teresa and the church kept her letters concealed for her entire life testifies to the radical power of the unwritten faith-laws. My heart broke to discover inside the book’s pages that Mother Teresa was an outlaw Christian, and an immensely lonely one. Given her important position in the global church, she was not permitted—nor would she permit herself—to go public with her true self.

On every page, Mother’s Teresa’s street-wise, in-the-trenches faith battles it out with the prescribed unwritten faith-laws. Check out this heart-breaking sentence she wrote, for example, in which she cruelly censors her own overflowing-with-questions heart: “How long will our Lord stay away?... Where is my faith?... My God—how painful is this unknown pain... So many unanswered questions live within me—I am afraid to uncover them—because of the blasphemy.”* The entire book is filled with gut-wrenching passages just like this.

Have you ever asked grievous, searching questions like Mother Teresa? If you ever summoned up the courage to do so, how did people around you— friends, parents, teachers, pastors, priests—respond? Did they make you feel chastised, guilty, or unhealthy? Did people of faith accuse you of backsliding or becoming an atheist? Or did they make you feel that your questions were legitimate?

No matter what anyone has ever said or will say to you: all of your questions are legit, and you are well within your rights to ask them. Moreover, to ask them may well have the surprising effect of drawing you closer to God, rather than pushing you further and further away.

God is not afraid of your questions. You should not be afraid of your own earnest questions either. Ask away.

Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta” ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk.