Jesus Wept

The recent revelation of Mother Teresa’s profound “crisis of faith” should have come as a surprise only to those who hold a stylized, popular understanding of Christianity. The gospel texts reveal a Jesus that “suffered” from a similar angst generated by the stubborn ignorance of those he hoped to enlighten, and that his sense of alienation and estrangement was certainly no less severe than Mother Teresa’s as he cried out from the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Only a superficial acquaintance with the Christ would allow one to embrace the consumer-oriented success theologies that are gaining such current popularity. When Elton Trueblood suggests that “the unexamined faith is not worth having,” I take this to mean that the belief in everything being better when one “gives” her/his life to Christ is mistaken because Jesus himself found it to be an ongoing struggle. Again, popular religion manages to do a great disservice to Jesus the Christ.