Quote: On Mother Teresa

[Editor's note: A lot of people don't realize that Mother Teresa did not spend her life healing the sick. Instead, her clinic was simply a place for people to go to die. Millions of dollars were donated to it, but she refused to use the money. She even refused to allow pain medication to be administered, believing that it was good for people to suffer unimaginable agony. Worst of all, Mother Teresa was a universalist. She encouraged dying pagans to pray to their false gods, and rejected the notion that they might need Jesus. The reality of Mother Teresa is nothing like the popular legend.]

This idea of redemption-through-suffering is far more Roman Catholic than it is Christian. Writes Tim Challies in his article The Myth of Mother Teresa:

“The common belief is that Mother Teresa worked with the sick and destitute to lovingly return them to health. An examination of her missions will show that this is far from the case. Mother Teresa believed that there is spiritual value in suffering. Once, when tending to a patient dying of cancer, she said ‘You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.’ (Christoper Hitchens – The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, p. 41). For this reason she would not prescribe pain killers in her clinics, choosing instead to allow her patients to experience the suffering that she believed would bring them closer to Christ.”

So Mother Teresa apparently “ministered” to people in her care by allowing them to suffer pain unrelieved by pain medication under the Roman Catholic delusion that their suffering had redemptive powers. But from Scripture we know that redemption comes through repentance and faith in Christ’s atoning death for the forgiveness of sins, and no other way.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6)

There is also, more importantly, evidence that Mother Teresa withheld the life-giving truth of the gospel message from those in her care who were dying, and would instead encourage them to pray to the “god” of their particular religious faith, whatever that might be. Here is even more troubling evidence that Mother Teresa herself was in all likelihood not saved herself.

–Christine Pack