Mystics, atheists, & Mother Teresa

The news that Mother Teresa doubted the existence of God gave atheists grist for their mill. But I insist that atheists and many Christians share an image of God that leads both groups astray and cannot be sustained in deep reflection—an external deity, a humanlike individual, a separate being. Theist belief in such a god is rightly denigrated by atheists.

Mystics, who experience what is called God more closely than the rest of us, tell us that It is not to be described as any thing or any person. I’ve not seen a better description of It than the one Huston Smith passes on from the yogas of Hinduism. He writes that the “only literally accurate description of the Unsearchable” is to say, “not this . . . not this,” of everything in the universe. “What remains will be God.”

This realization is common among mystic seers, whatever their tradition. In Christianity, apophatic mysticism says God is no thing and every thing. The Tao de Ching begins with the words, “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” In other words, It’s unknowable, indescribable. Those who experience It and try to find words for It fail, but they can’t stop trying.

Mystics experience this mysterious something, but they are conditioned by background, by language and culture. So Christian mystics usually begin with the Jesus image but their meditation transcends this image.

Thomas Merton converted from communism to Catholicism and became a Trappist monk. Toward the end of his life he also became a Zen Buddhist, like Thich Nhât Hanh mingling Buddhism with Christianity. In one of Merton’s works on Zen Buddhism, he expressed astonishment that he had more in common with Zen Buddhists than with members of his own religion. Since Merton, Catholic monastics follow his example of merging traditions.

I wish Mother Teresa had strayed from literal Christian belief. She would not have written, "Jesus has a very special love for you,” and then been assailed with “darkness,” “loneliness,” and “torture” when she looked for God. She would have known that a human figure can lead us to what we call God, but cannot be It.

What I wish for theists like Mother Teresa I also wish for atheists—the direct experience of the something that is the Ground and Source of all that is or could be. I finish with a mystic’s statement I like very much: “It is best to have an intimate relationship with God and best not to insist that she exists.”