By Diana Holbourn
During Becky's Last Term at University, she Takes Interest in Controversial Debates Between an Atheist and a Christian she Knows
Book Five of the online Becky Bexley series. The end of chapter 1 and part of chapter 2.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
Deborah said, "Well it's nice to know the Bible doesn't really teach that God excludes babies from heaven just for not being baptised then. But here's another thing: When people get to heaven, human nature being what it is, surely everyone will still sin, so it's not really going to be very heavenly after all, is it, unless people get new natures. If they do, are they still really them? In what way will they still be themselves? I mean, the temptation to do sinful things is such a basic part of human nature that the change would have to be pretty radical. Why not just create a whole set of new souls for company, or whatever God wants them for?
"I mean, it's not as if it takes much to be sinful. You know, Mrs Jones could just be swanning around in heaven when she sees an old neighbour of hers, for example, and without even really thinking before she speaks, imagine her instinctive nature just kicks in and she says to a soul next to her, 'I can't believe it! How did my neighbour get in here, the grumpy argumentative miserable pest!' And imagine if her neighbour hears her, and can't resist the temptation to answer, 'Why don't you mind your own business instead of meddling in other people's as usual, you nosy trouble-making old gossip! I'm just as confused about how you got here!'
"You know, it wouldn't be long before heaven was pretty much like earth, would it, with everyone following their instinctive natures! So how could it be that good? Do you think God will give people intensive training in social skills and tactfulness, to help everyone get on well, and give them refresher courses every time they stop living up to standard?"
One of the girls chuckled and joked, "Corr, I hope it's not like that! Imagine someone getting to heaven, and thinking they could finally rest and relax after all the tedious work they'd done on earth, only to find themselves back at school, being taken into a classroom with desks, with about thirty other souls, and a teacher who said, 'OK, you're all going to be here for the next seven years. School starts tomorrow. You need to all learn how to be better people before you can be let loose into heaven proper. If any of you fail the classes you'll be given, you'll be flung back down to earth, and you'll have to just wander the earth as a ghost forever.
"'Now, I'll tell you what lessons you've got tomorrow: First it's tactfulness training, then it's anti-prejudice training, and then you've got a twenty-minute break. Then it's harp-playing practice, and then PE, where you'll learn to become proficient at things like flying and balancing on clouds. Then it's lunchtime. After lunch, you've got kindness training, conversational skills - since after all, you'll all need specially-enhanced conversational skills if you're going to be able to think of what to talk about with people for all eternity; and lastly it's choir practice, where you'll learn songs you'll be singing in the heavenly choir.
"'I'll give you the rest of your weekly timetable later.
"'In the evenings, you'll all have to do homework. Of course, you won't actually be at home; this is a boarding school, where you'll all be living together. You'll be observed in your spare time to see how well you've learned the skills you're being taught. That'll make up part of your eventual grade.'"
They giggled.
Then Judith said seriously, "Really though, Deborah, we're not told that much about the kinds of changes that'll be made to people in heaven. But I imagine we'll be like better versions of ourselves, just automatically. The New Testament says that when people become committed Christians, part of God, the Holy Spirit, actually lives in us and helps us live better lives. So I imagine that in heaven, we'll be so filled with it that we'll be perfect. I can't be sure about that, but I imagine that's the way it'll probably work. The Bible says the Holy Spirit produces good virtues in people, like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And it says it makes people want to do the opposite of the things the sinful nature makes people want to do, and can actually help people change their ways for the better. And people who go to heaven will be people who want to change for the better anyway.
You know, if there were quite a few people in a room, and they were all given a drug that increased people's feelings of affection, maybe they'd all start feeling more laid-back and loving than normal, so they wouldn't be so easily provoked by snide remarks, but they'd find them easier to shrug them off, and they wouldn't be so likely to make them themselves. If a drug made by humans could do that, I reckon something given by God could be way more powerful!
"And as well as that, if everyone's in a really good mood because heaven's such a nice place, that'll make people feel like being nice too."
Deborah said, "I can see how that would make things better. But even if it's true, there are other reasons why heaven might not be as heavenly as you think it will be. For one thing, surely people who suffer horrendously on earth will still be upset by their memories of it in heaven, which will actually make heaven less heavenly for them, won't it? What if they're still really distressed by them?"
Judith said, "Well even people on earth often forget how horrible their suffering was over time, and it stops bothering them; and if people are experiencing a lot of joy in heaven, there won't be room in their minds to think about their past suffering."
Deborah said, "Possibly. But what about when they remember friends and family members they had who've gone to hell? Surely that'll still upset them, so that'll mean heaven can't be an entirely joyful experience. Or do you think they just forget those people ever existed? How can they do that if they were really close to them? Are people's memories wiped when they go to heaven, so they can't remember people they were close to, so they won't miss them? But if they can't remember life on earth, how will they even remember who they are? I mean, part of knowing who we are means knowing what our interests and beliefs and tastes and opinions are, and knowing about what experiences we've had in life and where we come from and so on. If we forgot all that, wouldn't we all just be wandering around feeling confused and lost? Do you think that's what heaven might be like - billions of souls all wandering around wondering who they are, not understanding how they got there?"
Judith said, "I don't think anything as drastic as having the whole memory wiped would need to happen for people to forget about upsetting things. And it would be possible to remember people but not to feel upset about them any more. And after all, as I said a couple of weeks ago, it might well be that hell isn't everlasting torment for most people. And anyone really evil who does end up in a place that is like that probably isn't the kind of person most people in heaven would miss or feel sad about not being near any more."
Deborah said, "People are going to feel upset about their friends suffering any amount of torment though if they can still remember them.
"And besides that, what about if souls have powers that enable them to see what's happening to people on earth when they're in heaven, and they see their loved ones suffering, or see anyone else suffering, for that matter? That's going to upset them, isn't it, so again, heaven won't actually be very heavenly!
"Or what about if they ask an angel how their loved ones on earth are doing, and the angel has to tell the truth, because that's the Christian thing to do, and they tell them things that upset them? How can heaven really be a place where everyone's happy?
"And what about all the people who die before they can finish doing something important, like scientists and inventors who could have made major breakthroughs inventing or discovering things that really would have made the world a better place if only they'd lived a few more years, and mothers who die when their children are young, knowing their children will have harder lives and won't be looked after so well because of it.
"I heard about a scientist who ran a lab with people working for him, who felt sure he wasn't far off developing an AIDS vaccine, when he got cancer and soon died. His AIDS vaccine might not have succeeded, because there've been other attempts to make them that failed. But who knows. And he might have gone on to do other work that did lead to health cures. His assistants might have carried on his work, but they might not have been as good at thinking up new ideas as he was. And for all we know, there might be loads of people who die when it would have been a lot better if they'd stayed on earth for longer.
"So what about people in heaven who just know they could have been doing something to help the world or their own children and stop them suffering so much if they'd still been living, but now they can't? Heaven isn't going to be much fun for them, is it, unless they decide to stop caring about the suffering going on on earth that might not be happening if they were still alive, and just abandon themselves to whatever heavenly delights there are on offer; but if they do that, it'll mean they're being selfish and uncaring, only thinking about their own pleasure, as if they think the suffering they could have stopped on earth just doesn't matter any more. But if they do that, since I'm sure the Bible says it's sinful to be selfish and uncaring, they'll be sinning; and since there'll probably be a lot of them, it'll mean heaven's full of sinners who are still sinning. So it can't be the perfect place you think it is.
"But if they carry on caring about the suffering they could have stopped if they'd stayed alive, heaven isn't going to be very heavenly for them, is it! It isn't going to be the place of joy and peace you think it is, because those people will be miserable."
Judith replied, "Yes, but for all we know, a lot of people in heaven might actually still be working to help people on earth. The Bible doesn't say people spend their entire time in heaven just enjoying themselves. Maybe God sometimes assigns parents who died while they still had young children to be their guardian angels, watching over them for years and giving them some protection."
Deborah said, "Realistically though, if that is happening, it can't be all that effective, because there must be loads of children whose parents have died, who live much much harder lives and suffer a lot more than they would have done if they hadn't. Or do a lot of children not get guardian angels, do you think, - maybe the children of parents who didn't make it to heaven, so they get left out, even though it's no fault of theirs that their parents didn't make it to heaven? Do you think God just unfairly discriminates against them?
"I think some people believe everyone's got a guardian angel; but if that's true, where are the guardian angels of children who are being seriously abused or injured? Asleep on the job? Having some off-duty time? Sneaking out to go on outings or socialise with their angel friends? Or what? Why aren't they around to protect them?"
Judith gave a long sigh, and said, "I can't answer those questions. What I said about guardian angels was just a guess. The Bible hardly says a thing about this kind of thing, so anything I could say would only be speculation. That doesn't mean there aren't answers though.
"But the belief that everyone's got a guardian angel isn't biblical. There's a verse in the New Testament that seems to say that people who are destined to end up in heaven get helped by angels in some way sometimes, but it doesn't explain just how.
"And in case you ask why some people would get helped by angels and not others, then like I said, the Bible barely says a thing about the subject, or about what anyone's guardian angel would actually be able to do or be assigned to do, if they had them, so I couldn't answer the question."
Deborah said, "OK. But if it was true that humans really could become guardian angels, it would have to mean they could see some of the things that were going on on earth that were causing suffering, and that would probably depress them, especially if they were only allowed to protect a relative of theirs but not other people suffering the same thing, such as if there was a flood, and they had to watch some people get drowned while they helped their relative escape. So they'd be miserable in heaven sometimes.
"OK, I know you said that thing you said about some people maybe becoming guardian angels was only a guess. But here's another thing: Considering all the new people who must be going to heaven all the time, who must have suffered badly when they died, a lot of them in wars or famines or disease epidemics, or after dying painful deaths from things like cancer, don't you think they'll depress the other people in heaven when they talk about those things, so heaven can't be the place of happiness you think it is, but people will always be being depressed by hearing about that kind of stuff?
"Or do you think God might be a strict authoritarian who bans people from talking about what happened to them on earth so as to keep people in his kingdom happy, or that heaven puts people on such a high all the time they don't even feel like thinking about what happened to them on earth any more, or about people they know who are still suffering down there, so even people who spent their lives caring for other people suddenly stop, because they start being devoted to their own pleasure all the time? But wouldn't that mean heaven actually makes people more selfish and uncaring? So the system God himself put in place actually makes them more sinful?"
Judith replied, "I don't think that necessarily follows; I mean, if you met a nurse and she said she likes to try and put her work and her patients out of her mind when she gets home so she can spend a few hours relaxing and enjoying herself before she goes to bed, you wouldn't say she was having a few hours of selfish uncaring time, would you; you'd say she was having a well-deserved rest. Just because a person's mind's full of other things for a while, it doesn't mean their personality will change and they wouldn't start caring for people again if there was a need they could do something about.
"Anyway, I don't know enough about heaven to be able to answer your questions, since the Bible doesn't say much about it. There are actually Bible verses that seem to say that people don't go to hell or heaven as soon as they die, but that we'll all kind of sleep till the end of the world and Jesus comes back again and judges everyone. But I'm not sure it's that clear, because there are other verses that give the impression that people will go to heaven immediately, like when Jesus was being crucified and a thief being crucified beside him defended him when another thief mocked him, and asked to be forgiven for his past, and Jesus assured him that he'd be in paradise with him that very day.
"And Paul said he was conflicted about whether he wanted to go on living, or die and be with Jesus; but if he was going to have to wait till the end of the world to be with him, dying wouldn't mean he'd get to be with him any more quickly than he would if he carried on living, unless he was thinking that since people have no sense of time passing when they're asleep, it would feel as if he was there pretty instantaneously even if he wasn't. But he probably didn't mean that.
"And there's even a passage in the Book of Revelation that says there'll eventually be new heavens and a new earth.
"It's a bit of a puzzle. I think it might take someone with more knowledge of things like the particular words used in the original language and the likely intentions of the writers to fit the pieces of it together. I mean, maybe Paul was only talking about people who lived before the age of Christianity really got going in the passage about sleeping till the end of the world or something. I don't know."
Deborah said, "Well in any case, besides those things, just supposing heaven really is a place where everyone's really happy, isn't it kind of strange and contradictory that God would care that heaven's a place where there's no suffering, but he doesn't care enough to try to eliminate suffering on earth? What about the suffering a lot of Christians face just before they die? If people do go to heaven straightaway when they die, then like I said, why does that little bit of time between when they haven't died yet and when they have make such a difference? Why would God be benevolent enough to make sure people don't suffer in heaven, when he doesn't care enough to stop suffering just before death, or in fact any other suffering on earth? It doesn't really make sense to me."
Deborah continued, "And why would a good God allow anyone at all to suffer agonising deaths? Why hasn't he made it so most people don't suffer that much pain at all while they die, or at any time, for that matter? Why does he allow some children to get cancer and die? Or adults, who can be in pain for ages before they die? If you say lingering deaths are to give people an opportunity to think over their lives and repent of their sins so they'll go to heaven or something, the deaths still wouldn't need to be agonising; and why, in that case, do a lot of people who are already Christians die slow upsetting or painful deaths, while a lot of atheists maybe don't suffer much at all or for very long before they die? Isn't it unfair of God to allow atheists to sometimes die sudden deaths where they don't have any chance to think over their lives and decide to change, if that's what slow deaths are for?"
Judith said, "The Bible doesn't say slow deaths are to give people a chance to think over their lives and decide to change and become Christians. I would never argue that. There's a lot I don't know about the reasons for suffering. We're just not given all the answers."
Deborah said, "But shouldn't all the suffering on earth make you question whether God really is a loving God like you think he is? And what about wild animals, having to eat each other to survive? How could a supposedly loving God stand to watch it happen day after day, hour after hour - all those animals that are in pain while they're being eaten, and having to spend some of their lives scared, running away from predators; how could a truly loving God allow that? How could a God of love stand to watch it, let alone create the natural world where he knew it was going to happen? You don't have that kind of logical problem if you're an atheist and you think everything got here through the course of evolution over time!"
Judith momentarily felt a bit upset at the thought of animals being in pain while they're eaten, and at Deborah's questions, and wondered how it would look if she burst into tears. But imagining how she'd look if she did, she began to grin, before realising that grinning just then must look really inappropriate. Then she looked embarrassed instead.
But she said, "I can understand you wanting to ask questions like that. I don't know all the answers. But I think the Bible says that when humans and animals were first created, they were all vegetarian. There might have been catastrophes in the world that led to food becoming much more scarce, and humans and animals started eating other animals after that to survive.
"Anyway, as for God watching all the suffering in the world, I don't really know how it's possible to do that without being desperate to stop it; I can't imagine being able to just watch it happen myself. I'd want to keep making it stop. But I suppose it's possible That I'd feel differently if I could understand things from God's perspective, because there are things I'd know that I don't know now, such as about what heaven's like.
"I mean, the New Testament talks about heaven being a place where people will enjoy themselves forever! Maybe it'll be full of animals that used to be on earth too. So imagine if God's watching someone suffer, and he knows the suffering's going to go on for the next couple of years and get worse and worse, but then the person's going to be brought up to heaven, and then they'll spend the whole of eternity enjoying themselves. Imagine if you were a person like that: By the time you'd been in heaven for a while, whatever you'd suffered on earth would just seem like a really distant memory, if you even remembered it at all, and your life would just be one long blissful existence, so you wouldn't mind any more that you'd suffered horribly on earth, and you'd be really grateful to God for giving you such an enjoyable time in heaven."
Deborah said, "Hang on though: Are you saying you think that as far as God's concerned, the suffering on earth doesn't matter all that much, so when babies get horribly abused by nasty parents and so on, he thinks, 'Oh well, they'll forget about it when they get to heaven.'? Surely a genuinely good God wouldn't allow it to happen in the first place! I'm sure any one of us would stop it if it was in our power to. We're supposedly nowhere near as good as God, and yet he doesn't stop it! You know, you'd have thought a God who was better than us would do a lot more to stop it than we ever could! It doesn't sound as if he's very good at all! Think about it: Even as we speak, in this comfortable place, there are almost certainly lots of nasty things going on in some parts of the world. There are probably horrible things going on somewhere every second of every day. How could a good God put up with it?"
Judith said, "Well like I said, I don't know all the answers. There's something I do know though: The New Testament's full of instructions to Christians - and everyone really - to do what they can to improve the lives of other people, and not to do harm. So we can conclude that it's up to everyone to do what we can to try to eliminate suffering where we can. I'm not necessarily talking about trying to intervene to stop fights if we see them happening, or other things that might put us in danger; but even just anonymously calling the police sometimes might help to stop trouble; and maybe giving money to children's charities and things can. A whole lot of the suffering on earth is caused by humans doing harm. And like I said, Jesus said that anyone who isn't willing to help other people, or who likes doing harm, won't make it to heaven. So you can tell that God cares about it, or he'd let everyone into heaven no matter what.
"I don't know why God allows so much harm to be done. There's one thing I do know though: If everyone in the world was a genuine Christian, the world would be a much, much better place than it is now! We simply wouldn't have child abuse, or any other abuse. We wouldn't have violence; we wouldn't have exploitation; we wouldn't have unwanted teenage pregnancies, or forced marriages, or fraud, - there's a whole load of things that cause suffering that we just wouldn't have, because everyone would be obeying the Bible commands I told you about a couple of weeks ago.
"I don't think it would be helpful for anyone to reject Christianity because they've got doubts about whether God's really good, because Christianity could be such a force for good in the world if everyone really obeyed its teaching. That's the main reason I like it so much. There's no way we're going to know what God's really like till we meet him; but in the meantime, I think we just have to make the best of what we've got. But if God was actually bad, I don't suppose we'd have good Bible commands, like all the ones I told you about a couple of weeks ago.
"And it's hard for me to think God could be bad when I read about the life of Jesus, who the Bible says is a part of God. I'm thinking of the way it says he was caring, helping people who the polite society rejected as outcasts but who wanted to change for the better, or who at least felt guilty about the way they were behaving, like some prostitutes, and caring so much about the people that he carried on healing and teaching them even when he was hungry and tired and would have preferred to go away and rest.
"And I've read lots of testimonies by people who say they changed for the better when they became Christians, and they believe God helped them to do that. If God was evil, surely that wouldn't happen! Why would he want his followers to change for the better, so they stopped doing harm and lived good lives? I don't know all the reasons why there's so much suffering in the world, but I think the fact that so many people are inspired to change for the better when they become Christians is evidence that God must be good."
Deborah replied, "Apart from the fact that a lot of people who join cults probably think God's changed them for the better too, after being inspired to change by things their cult's taught them. Are you suggesting God must be OK with people joining harmful cults, because he can use them to make people better people? Or might it be the case that it isn't really God changing people for the better after all, but them being inspired to change by something human?"
Judith said, "Well I haven't heard anything about people changing for the better in cults; but maybe some people do. But people can change for the better for lots of reasons; and not everyone who thinks they've been changed by God really will have been changed by him; I mean, an inspirational motivational speaker can give people strong feelings that make them feel like changing, for one thing, and maybe sometimes people can mistakenly think the feelings they get are God's influence. Maybe that's sometimes what happens, both with Christians and cult members. And there are probably motivational speakers even in Christian churches who do preach messages that inspire people to live better lives, but then it turns out they've got an ulterior motive, like just trying to make them feel good so they'll be grateful to them, so they can more easily persuade them to give them wads of their money, and things like that."
One of the girls smiled and said, "A bit like some televangelists, who fraudulently promise people the chance of getting a healing miracle in return for a donation, and things like that!
"I was on a forum not long ago, and I made a joke about Jesus' disciple Judas being a bit like one of those. Someone claimed that he was technically a Christian, even though he betrayed Jesus by guiding some of the religious leaders to where he was, and pointing him out to them by giving him a kiss of greeting or supposed affection, when they wanted to arrest him in a private place away from the crowds, who would have been upset and caused trouble for them if they'd done it in public. This person said Judas could still be called a Christian despite that, since he was a follower of Christ, and that's what the word Christian means.
"I joked, ' Judas wasn't a Christian! He wasn't much of a follower of Christ, when the gospels say he had charge of the money box Jesus and his disciples kept their money in, and he used to steal from it. He was a traitor from the beginning, an archetype of the modern televangelist, a trailblazer for them, preaching about Jesus but stealing the people's money.'
"I said, 'Televangelists of today ought to start calling themselves Judasans instead of Christians. Judas clearly died for the love of the faith of Judasanity, the faith of all modern TV evangelists and a lot of the Church from ancient times till the present day. But unfortunately, TV evangelists who defraud money out of people will never start calling themselves their more accurate name, because in the true spirit of their founder, they know that would give the game away. They instead betray their followers with the "kiss" of the false promise of miracles and success in return for donations.'"
The girls smiled.
Then Judith continued, "Anyway, I was about to say that I think a lot of cults are counterfeits of the real thing, so I'm pretty sure God won't approve of them, even if he approves of any changes for the better their members make in their lives. After all, cults often use mind control techniques to recruit and keep their followers, like isolating them from outside influences like family members and former friends who might try to persuade them their beliefs are wrong. They use methods to do that such as telling them they need to keep away from unbelievers, and that people they know who question their beliefs are under the influence of the devil, so they shouldn't be listened to."
One of the girls said, "That's bad. What else do you know about cults?"
Judith said, "I don't know much. But I've heard a few things, like that cults can keep their members partly by appealing to their pride and self-esteem, by convincing them the cult's members are the ones who've been specially chosen by God for a special place in heaven, so the members think they're better than everyone else, and that kind of thing. Cults can be attractive to some people, partly because life can seem to have more meaning or excitement in it if they feel as if they're working towards what they believe is mastery of something the cult teaches people they need to master to get God's special favour or to be really enlightened or whatever, such as in-depth knowledge of astrology. I don't know all that much about cults, but that's the impression I've got from what I've heard. And they use quite a few other techniques to keep members too, not all the same ones, but there are some that are pretty common, such as getting people hooked in the first place by showing them a lot of affection when they join.
"I think a lot of people who join cults are people who've been suffering in various ways, who want an escape from life into something more exciting, or something that seems to give their lives more meaning, where there seem to be people who hold out the promise of being able to help them improve their lives, and can make them feel loved, and give them a sense of belonging. Cults can seem to offer that, at least at first."
Deborah said, "If cults are counterfeits, why does God even allow them to exist, if they're really leading people away from the truth? I mean, if God thinks they're doing that, won't that mean they'll be increasing people's chances of going to hell? Why would he let that happen?
"Maybe you think it's because he's given us free will to choose what we do. But if people are under mind control in cults, is their will really free?"
Judith said, "I don't really know the answer to your question about why God allows cults to exist. But there are some Bible verses that seem to say God already knows who's going to heaven and hell. That would mean people won't really be increasing their chances of going there by joining a cult, because either they're destined to get out of it somehow, or they would have gone to hell anyway for another reason even if they hadn't joined it. I can't say that with any certainty at all though. The Bible doesn't say much about that kind of thing.
"But as for your free will comment, the Bible doesn't say we've been given unlimited free will. After all, no one could say locking criminals up in prison could be against God's will, because it's depriving them of their free will to commit crime, or anything like that. A lot of people have to do things they wouldn't do if they had total free will, like when children have to live with abusive parents."
Deborah said, "Fair enough. I've heard that the order of nuns Mother Teresa set up, called the Missionaries of Charity, was run like a cult. I heard it in interviews with former members, who said that one problem was that they were isolated from people they'd known before, so much so that they were only allowed to visit their families once a decade, and it was hard to get permission to do that at other times even if family members were ill or dying.
"And they were only allowed to take phone calls from them in emergencies, and only allowed to write to them once a month, and their superiors in the organisation would always read their letters before they were sent; and they were instructed never to mention the hardships they were made to suffer in their religious communities, which actually included having to whip themselves on most days with a rope, as unbelievable as that might sound. Apparently Mother Teresa had this motto that for love to be real it had to hurt. Maybe she took it pretty literally. The instructions about nuns having to whip themselves came from her, and sometimes on special occasions like during Lent, she instructed them to do 'double penance', which meant to whip themselves with twice as many strokes of the rope as they normally would. It wasn't just to pay for their own sins, but she believed it would pay for souls to be saved too.
"And the sisters had to wear a spiked chain for a while every day with the spikes pointing inwards. And they had to do public penances as well, like kneeling in front of the nun in charge of them at a mealtime and begging for a meal; and then they had to kneel down in a corner to eat it."
One of the girls quipped, "Oh come on Deborah, are you sure you're not somehow confusing what goes on there with some kind of late night horror fantasy or parody you watched? Maybe you were too drunk one night to know the difference."
Deborah replied, "No. I heard these things in interviews with people who used to be religious sisters in Mother Teresa's order. Another thing they said was that they were taught that they should treat everything their superior in the order said as the voice of God, and obey it even if they didn't think it made sense. And if their superior scolded them, no matter how unfair they thought it was, it was forbidden for them to answer back, but they just had to thank their superior for correcting them.
"One of the former sisters I heard being interviewed said she became a superior herself, and she said that the nuns were so repressed with all the petty and unhealthy rules they had to follow that when some of them finally became superiors in charge of other nuns, even if they'd previously thought they'd never do it, they abused their power, because suddenly having power over others was so intoxicating it was really tempting to go over-the-top with it. She said one example of when she did that was when a nun asked her if she could have some time off because she was ill, and she said, 'You're not that sick!'
"And one of the other former sisters said one of the others burned herself really badly in the kitchen, and the next day she was there for work as normal, covered in bandages, and she said her superior told her she couldn't have time off, even though she was really in pain. She said the superior had told her that when Mother Teresa had had a fever she carried on working, so her nuns should too. Well I don't know if Mother Teresa really did go spreading her germs around when she had a fever instead of sensibly isolating herself from people for a while to spare them; but I wonder whether the superior who ordered the nun to carry on working was just abusing the power she'd been given to order people around. Abuse of power in the guise of holiness! That's what it sounds like to me. Or just heartlessness.
"And I heard that the nuns tended to be sleep-deprived, because they had to go to bed late, and get up very early to spend a couple of hours or so in prayers before breakfast. Isn't causing members to become sleep-deprived one way cults stop them from thinking so clearly, so they're less likely to think about whether what they're being taught and told to do is really sensible? I mean, I can't say for certain that that was the reason things were set up the way they were in Mother Teresa's organisation. But a former sister said they didn't have much time to think for themselves, because they were always doing something, whether that be working or kneeling in the chapel when they had prayer time.
"And they were often in a rush to get things done before a bell went in the convents at various times of day, and when it did they had to stop what they were doing immediately and move on to the next thing, like going from chapel to doing housework. They were told they should treat the bell as the voice of God.
"And they weren't allowed to talk to each other except when they were all together sometimes, or to form friendships. They were forbidden to go out alone; they had to go out with at least one other person; and when they did, they weren't allowed to talk to each other; they had to spend all their time alone together praying the rosary. And when they were all together, they weren't supposed to talk about anything going on outside the community, like films and so on; and they weren't allowed newspapers, and only books their superiors permitted. One said they were told that if they felt like leaving, it was the devil tempting them. And they were told that to doubt or question the rules or anything else about the order was a sin.
"It was as if they were being isolated from outside influence as much as possible, and discouraged from thinking for themselves or coming into contact with anyone else who might cause them to do that, which is what cults do to people."
One of the girls in the group said, "Wow, I wouldn't want to live like that! I wonder if the people who became nuns there knew what it was like before they joined."
Deborah said, "From what I've heard, they didn't. And it gets worse! One former sister who was interviewed, who worked in Mother Teresa's home for the dying in Calcutta for a while, said that when she was there in about 1980, some of the sisters were harsh with the sick people there, for instance washing them in public when they first came in, by throwing cold water over them. Maybe they didn't have nice running warm water there. And despite the fact that the inmates - or whatever they're called - were seriously ill, there were no strong painkillers.
"I've heard elsewhere that they only got given mild painkillers like aspirin for severe pain. But I did read that morphine was unavailable to them because of laws that restricted its use to only the big hospitals, because of worries that people would get addicted to it if it was more widely available. Still, the organisation got to be rolling in money after they became famous because they got so many donations, so you would have thought they could have funded stays in the big hospitals for people in severe pain so they could get proper pain relief, and maybe even get cured of their illnesses. But I've read a claim that no distinction was made between people who had illnesses that could be cured and those who couldn't be cured in the home for the dying. It seems the nuns didn't have the medical expertise to do that when Mother Teresa was alive.
"But it seems that Mother Teresa wasn't about curing people; she seems to have had this wacked-out medieval-style belief that suffering was helping God save souls, and that was what God wanted, so getting people cured wasn't her thing, except that it was different when she got ill herself, and got treated in some of the best hospitals in the world.
"But I've read claims that strong painkillers were denied to people in Mother Teresa's homes on principle, because of her belief that God was using suffering to save souls, or that it was good in other ways. I don't know how true that is. But I wonder if other strong painkillers were available to them instead of morphine, but they didn't believe in using them.
"The former sister who said she saw people being treated roughly at the home for the dying said she was in one of Mother Teresa's homes in another country when she saw a sister giving a TB patient the wrong injection, and it turned out that she didn't even know what dose she'd given. The sister who saw that and the interviewer were saying Mother Teresa had this belief that expertise was a bad thing because it could lead to pride, and that it was a good thing to just go about treating people while trusting that God would help them do what he wanted if they just obeyed him, as if they were just 'pencils in his hand'. They had a basic medical training, but no more. I think standards have improved since Mother Teresa died. But expecting that God will spoon-feed you to help you give the right medication and so on sounds to me like far more of a pride thing than becoming an expert so you really know what you're doing!
"The former sister who saw the wrong medication being given also said that at the time, people with infectious diseases like TB and other illnesses were made to live closely together, so serious infection could easily spread.
"The interviewer said that on an American television programme where she was being interviewed in 1989, Mother Teresa actually said that her work was to help people accept suffering as a gift. She said her audience would be surprised how contented poor people in India were with their lot, and she told a story that she seemed to find amusing, for some reason, about a woman who was dying of cancer in terrible pain, with her children around her who she was upset that she was going to have to leave behind, and she said to the woman that her suffering was a sign that she'd come so close to God that Jesus was kissing her. The woman said, 'Then tell Jesus to stop kissing me!' The people in the studio laughed, for some reason. The woman obviously thought it sounded as if Mother Teresa was saying she thought the pain was Jesus kissing her. Whatever she really meant, it's a pity she didn't instead think that the woman's suffering was a sign that she needed to be in a hospital receiving pain relief and treatment."
One of the girls said, "This is horrible! I grew up thinking Mother Teresa was caring and nice!"
Deborah said, "I expect a lot of people did. I bet most of the nuns who joined her religious organisation were full of optimism and trust in it, ready and willing to dedicate their lives to helping people, not realising what they were letting themselves in for. At least now we've got the Internet, people can find out more about what it's really like before they join. Lots and lots of people joined before the Internet existed, so it would have been a lot harder for them to find out things like this.
"Another bad thing is that I heard that it seems as if Mother Teresa romanticised poverty, as if she thought of it as something to be wallowed in rather than eliminated, or that her views about it being a virtue went to extremes. I read that one former sister said she was working at an AIDS hospice once, and saw that Mother Teresa's organisation had 55 million dollars in donations, but it was a big effort to even get permission to buy a little fridge to put the men's medicines in. It seems that a fair chunk of the donations get transferred to a Vatican bank.
"Another person saw the cramped conditions in an orphanage run by the organisation in Calcutta, with two or three babies to one cot, and with no play areas. At least, that was the way it used to be, according to something I read. You'd have thought with the amount of money they were getting, they could have built new orphanages as well as playgrounds for the orphans; but it seems Mother Teresa wasn't really about providing more physical comfort than was necessary for life, for some reason.
"And one of the nuns I heard interviewed said Mother Teresa believed her nuns shouldn't get too close to others, even decreeing that babies shouldn't be held for any longer than it would take to do what was necessary for their care, like feeding them. It seems that she had some kind of primitive belief that suffering was useful. I mean, I have heard that some people who've suffered have said they've benefited from it, because it's helped them become more caring towards other people who are suffering; but that's not going to apply to everyone, especially babies! But it seems Mother Teresa had some kind of superstitious belief that suffering actually helps God save souls so it's a good thing, so a bit of care ought to be given to people who suffer, since Jesus wanted that, but not enough care to eliminate their suffering as much as possible.
"I read some quotes of hers. She said things like, 'The most beautiful gift for a person is that he can participate in the suffering of Christ', and, 'I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.' And I read that she said, 'All that suffering - where would the world be without it? It is innocent suffering, and that is the same as the suffering of Jesus. He suffered for us and all the innocent suffering is joined to His in the Redemption. It is co-redemption. That is helping to save the world from worse things.'
"Maybe those quotes sound sweet and holy to some people; but if the practical consequences of the beliefs that spawned those quotes meant suffering wasn't alleviated as much as it could have been, because suffering was thought to be a good thing, because it's helping God, then that's not good.
"I've even read accusations that what Mother Teresa was really all about was wanting to supposedly save souls by converting people to Christianity, or Catholicism. I don't know about that, but it would mean her homes were mostly about gathering together a captive audience, or something like that. She denied wanting to convert people to Christianity in her early days, but later she said it was routine for people to be asked if they wanted to go to heaven and given a makeshift baptism on their deathbeds if they said yes, as if she thought that was what it took to convert them.
"It seems Mother Teresa wasn't about alleviating suffering much beyond the minimum even when it would have been easy. I read that there was a building in New York that was offered to her organisation, I think as a home for AIDS patients, and they were offered it for the price of a mere one dollar; but disability equality legislation meant a lift had to be installed so people who could no longer walk could get up to higher floors easily; and the people offering the building actually said they'd pay for a lift to be installed; but Mother Teresa refused to have one put in, saying her nuns could carry disabled patients upstairs.
"That would have been quite an effort. It seems that either she had a dogmatic belief that it was beneficial for her nuns to be as self-sacrificing as possible, for whatever reason, or she didn't want her homes to look too wealthy in case word got round and people stopped donating so much because they didn't think there was so much need. Who knows! What I read didn't say much about why Mother Teresa didn't want a lift installed; but since she refused to get one, and the disability legislation said there needed to be one, the nuns eventually gave the building back to the organisation that had donated it.
"So it seems it didn't matter to Mother Teresa that it would have been more pleasant for disabled people to go up and downstairs by lift, and possibly a lot less painful if they were in a lot of pain; and it would certainly have been more pleasant for the nuns, who might otherwise have developed back problems with all the heavy lifting.
"Of course, I can't guarantee that everything I've read about Mother Teresa and her organisation's true. If you're interested, you could look on the Internet for information yourselves. Maybe you'll end up reading some of the articles I read. Then you can see how believable you think they are.
"I've mentioned this kind of thing to Christians before; and one or two of them have flared up into unhinged-sounding tempers as soon as I started, and they've started insulting me, accusing me of things like being a liar, without any evidence, and of just wanting to make trouble for the Catholic Church because I'm an atheist who's just bound to be anti-religion. And then they've started making other unfair personal criticisms about me. I've got the impression they were just trying to intimidate me into silence really, because they didn't want to hear what I was saying. They don't bother me; their insults say a lot more about them and how genuine their Christianity really is than they say about me; they tell me these people are really closed-minded bad-tempered irrational bigots, who get carried away spewing out accusations against people at the drop of a hat, without really thinking about what they're saying.
"And Christians have said things to me like, 'Have you ever spent even a day emptying bedpans or caring for people with infectious diseases? If you haven't, you've got no right to criticise people who spend their lives doing it, who are probably much better than you!'
"Well maybe Mother Teresa and her religious sisters are much better people than I'll ever be; but that doesn't mean I've got no right to criticise them. (And I don't know how much Mother Teresa actually did of that kind of thing herself, especially after she got famous, when she spent a lot of time jetting around the world to visit her homes and convents in various countries, and to speak to and receive honours from dictators and other people who wanted to praise her and be seen with her.)
"But anyway, Judgment of criticism should be based on its merits - or lack of them - and not on the quality of the person doing the criticising! I mean, just imagine if I saw a mum shouting at and smacking a child hard for just whining or something, and I complained to someone, and they said, 'Stop criticising that mum. You've got no right to criticise. It's a hard stressful job being a parent. Have you ever stayed up all night with a child who's ill, worrying and trying to make sure they're allright, or been sleep-deprived because you've had to often get up in the night because they've been crying, like parents have to? No? Then you're in no position to judge that mother as a bad parent.' Well no I haven't done those things; but that doesn't mean it's not fair of me to complain when I see children being treated more harshly than I think they deserve.
"Just imagine if the whole world thought like that, so if it was still legal to give school children the cane, a child could be caned and caned till they were really in pain, but anyone who felt like protesting would think, 'Well those teachers are devoting their lives to finding good ways to teach those children worthwhile things, probably staying up late into the night to mark their work and think of good ways to give them new lessons; who am I to criticise!' Where would anyone draw the line with that? Just how much would teachers be able to get away with?'
"I mean, yes, you hear a lot of criticism of people that's just thoughtless, or just sounds like petty point-scoring, like when opposition politicians fling out condemnations of the party in power for something that's gone wrong, and you think, 'Do you seriously believe you could have done better? If you really do, why don't you make some helpful suggestions on how to go about it instead of just criticising!' And I know there are a lot of circumstances where it's easy to just be critical when things aren't up to standard but you don't realise you've got no understanding of how hard it is to get things right. But that's different from when some real thought's gone into the criticism, or it's being done because the person criticising really cares about the problems and would like them fixed."
One of the girls grinned and quipped, "Thanks for the lecture. You really ought to become a Christian and be a preacher. You could do a lot of good. Maybe it's your life's calling, and you just don't know it yet."
Deborah replied sarcastically, "Ha ha!"
Judith said, "It doesn't sound fair that people have insulted you. I wouldn't insult you just because you said something that upset me. Christians can't be expected to be perfect, so we'll all sometimes do things that don't seem Christian to other people; but if a Christian doesn't see anything wrong with getting into a temper and saying bigoted things, or they keep doing it even though they do think it's wrong, then yes, it's a problem."
Deborah said, "It seems there are a lot of Christians with bigoted views out there. Someone once told me her dad said that if she or her sisters ever got pregnant before they were married, he'd throw them out of the house. There's an example of good Christian compassion for you! And the number of Christians who are really bigoted against Gays! One of these days I'm going to say to one of them, 'Why do you think being gay is so much worse than being, say, an ill-tempered mean-spirited closed-minded bigot, like you?'"
The girls smiled.
Then one of them said, "I was on a forum where some people used to insult each other all the time. There was one man who called himself Yogi who was always saying horrible things about atheists, like that they were idiots who never thought deeply about the meaning of life, but were just led around by the nose into whatever pleasurable experiences they could find, since their only goal in life was to experience pleasure and avoid pain.
"One day he was having an argument with an angry atheist who called himself Scotsman, when another atheist protested that what Scotsman had said must have touched a raw nerve in Yogi and he couldn't think of a counter-argument, so he was just doing the equivalent of yelling 'No' and stamping his foot.
"I joked, 'Oh come on, it's only a bit of fun. If Scotsman can foam at the mouth, why can't Yogi have a go? In fact, why can't we all have a go? Yeah! Hey, why don't we all have a foaming-at-the-mouth competition, to see who can foam at the mouth the most impressively? Would you like to go first?
"'Tell you what though. Perhaps foaming at the mouth about Christianity and atheism is becoming a bit old hat, so why don't we foam at the mouth about things that are original and off-the-wall? Tell you what. Why don't you have a go at foaming at the mouth about the fact that most people can't eat ten or more ice-creams a day without getting fat? Or something like that? Yeah, go on.'
"A bit later, someone said, 'This thread is gay.'
"I joked, 'I noticed that. Its high heels and handbag are quite stylish, aren't they. I also noticed it's been stuffing itself with croissants all day. It'll get fat and unwieldy if we let it carry on. Who's going to volunteer to try to stop it?'
"There was another thread where I said, 'In a church near me yesterday, they threw wet sponges at the pastor for about twenty minutes. It was a scheme thought up by one of the children. I think it raised money for charity, but it could have been the church. They made some stocks and put the pastor in them, and then people could pay to throw a wet sponge at him. It seems that lots of people wanted to.'
"Someone asked if the punishment had changed the pastor for the better, saying that if it hadn't, the church could build a pool where he could be whipped with wet towels.
"I joked, 'I don't think the pastor changed at all. Whipping with wet towels could be a good idea, but might be a bit extreme, although building a pool sounds good; I think he should try doing his sermons from underwater. He could have the kind of equipment divers do and breathe air mixed with helium - or whatever it is that makes people's voices go all high-pitched, and stay underwater for the whole sermon. And there should be an accordion or something playing in the background, and he should have to swim in time with the music all the way throughout his sermon. When it gets faster, he'll have to swim faster and faster, and there can be a rule that he has to talk faster and faster as well, so he speeds his talking up and slows it down according to the speed of the music, like he does with his swimming.'
"I didn't think his sermons were all that good, so I thought it would be fun if they could be livened up."
One of the other girls said, "I was on a forum where an atheist who called himself Tom started a thread where he put some jokes that insulted Christians. He liked to do things like that. I joked, 'Hey Tom, why were you named Tom by your parents? Were you named after Thomas the Tank Engine?'
"And I found some nursery rhymes on the Internet with the name Tom in them and quoted them there, and asked if his parents had named him Tom after any of the Toms in those.
"He didn't reply, so after a while, I put another message on the board saying, 'You didn't answer my question about whether you were named after any of the Tom characters in the nursery rhymes I put here, or after the steam engine with human qualities like being able to talk, Thomas the Tank Engine. Maybe if your parents were railway enthusiasts, that's why they named you after him? Is your middle name Tank-Engine, perhaps?
"'Or is Tom short for tomato or something? Are your parents big fans of tomatoes?'
"He still didn't reply, and didn't seem to be around for a bit, so I joked, 'Oh dear! Tom hasn't posted here in a while. Maybe we should all apologise for teasing him. Right. I have this confession we could all undersign:
"'We, the collective members of the forum, recognise that we should not have turned this thread into a "let's tease Tom" thread. It was unseemly, and we realise our error and wish to apologise unreservedly. We promise we won't do it again.
"'I'll be the first one to undersign it. Now come on everyone, do the honourable thing and follow suit. ... Or was it just me who turned this into a "let's tease Tom" thread? So is it just me who ought to be making the confession? Oh yeah, perhaps it is. The trouble is that I'm not sure if I can hold to that last bit about promising never to tease him again. If everyone who didn't tease him in the first place undersigns the confession, they're more likely to be able to promise that, since they don't do it anyway. So at least it'll be mostly held to, which would be better than it would be if I was the only one who made the confession and then the promise was 100 % broken because I did tease him again. So come on you lot, confess!'
"I can't remember why now, but for some reason, the subject of the thread got way more serious not long after that, because it turned into an argument about whether terrorist suspects ought to be tortured even when there's no good evidence that they might be guilty. When it had gone on for pages, someone posted an insulting joke about Jesus and Mary. They must have read just the first posts in the thread and not realised it had turned serious. I joked,
"'Is that supposed to be on the predominant topic of this thread? If so, is the torture in the fact that people have to read it, or was it torture to write? Don't you realise this thread turned into the torture thread? A lengthy discussion on torture. That means that from now on, any joke anyone puts here has to be sufficiently terrible that it can be classified as torture.'"
They smiled. Then one of the other girls in the group said, "I was on a forum, where an atheist said Christian fundamentalists are so gullible they believe all kinds of silly things. He listed some, and one was the belief that the earth is flat. I joked,
"'"Fundamentalists" think the earth is flat? Yeah, sure they do. In fact I'm sure you could go to churches and Christian schools all over the place that teach that the earth is flat, and that if you go too far in any direction, you'll go hurtling off into space. Perhaps they also believe that that's how spaceships get into space - they just travel along the earth's surface till they zoom off it at its end.'
"The man who said Christian fundamentalists believe in the flat earth often said Christians are gullible. One day I joked to someone else, 'He's actually the Loch Ness Monster. The reason no one's ever found it is that he now lives in the sea just north of Scotland, which he prefers because it's bigger. He was carried there in a van by his local atheists group, after he told them he was scared of being captured by someone so gullible they refused to believe he doesn't exist.'
"And I was having a conversation with a few other people about religion and atheism once, when someone butted in and said, 'You people and your slight differences disgust me.'
"I joked, 'Really? Is that why you come to this forum all the time - do you have a perverted addiction to being disgusted? after all, isn't this whole place all about discussing little differences ... or something? So what's it like to be addicted to being disgusted? Is it fun, or is it just ... well, disgusting?'
"And on another day, an atheist said it's hard for Christians to be scientists, because a scientific education trains people to question things and criticise their own ideas, but faith must never be questioned, so they would have to try to keep it in a separate untouchable place in their minds where they would do their best to treat it differently from everything else. I think he was pretending to be a scientist himself on there at the time, so I asked him why he didn't think to criticise his own anti-Christian ideas in that case, since he kept putting the same arguments that supposedly debunked the Bible but didn't really on the board time after time, no matter what anyone said to argue against them. I joked, 'You yourself seem to have two strong opposing attitudes in your mind, one that thinks it's important to question things, and one that doesn't. It must be almost as if you have two heads! ... Or have you? Of course, people can get away with that on the Internet - no one need ever know!'
"And another joke I made when he said Christians who are scientists have to do a very difficult work of keeping their faith separate from their normal tendency to challenge and be skeptical of ideas was, 'Of course they must! After all, what self-respecting scientist would actually believe the stories of a bunch of uneducated fishermen, who weren't even scientists, with the scientific part of their minds! so scientists must be skeptical of everything? That must mean everything! Such scientists were clearly those who, when they were children, refused to believe their teachers when they told them it was the end of the lunch break, because they had no hard scientific evidence that the lunch break really was supposed to end then. So they were always late for lessons in the afternoon, and perhaps only came in for them at all because they were bored, lacking intellectual stimulation once the rest of the children had gone indoors.'
"There was someone on the forum who seemed to be a fanatical Jew, and one day he said Israel never fought any offensive wars in the Old Testament. This atheist who was claiming to be a scientist at the time sarcastically asked if that meant all the wars the Bible says Israel fought never really happened then, and I joked,
" 'I'm sure they didn't. I expect they were just invented in an afternoon by a spotty spoiled teenager with a mind horribly warped by violent video games. You know how they get. Perhaps the family experienced a power cut one day so he couldn't play them, and he needed to vent his addiction to violent fantasy somehow. I think it's impressive for an afternoon's work, don't you, even though the subject matter isn't really to my tastes?'
"There was a time when me and this atheist who was claiming to be a scientist at the time had a more serious argument than usual, because he pretended to be another person for a while, and then said he was dying, probably because he wanted to stop doing it, and I found him out and was annoyed with him. But after some time I said I was happy to finish the argument. One of the people reading, who didn't like the argument, said, 'At last! Now I understand why people say "hallelujah"!'
"I joked, 'Good! Perhaps if we have a few more disputes, it'll lead to a full-scale Christian conversion on your part!' I said to the man I'd been arguing with, 'Let's go at it!'
"At another time near the end of the argument, I said I'd make the argument more entertaining from then on, and asked if anyone had any suggestions for how to. One of the forum members joked, 'Yes, post blank posts. That way we can guess what you're saying but not have to read your words at all, so we'll be happy.'
"I joked back, 'Oh, but I'd find that boring. What we could do is try posting all our sentences backwards. Then you can enjoy the challenge of working out what they mean. But then, we might find that a bit of a challenge. Tell you what. What you could do is achieve a similar effect by reading everything we say backwards. Start at the end of each post and just read from right to left, working your way to the beginning. Then, if you'd rather not know what we're saying, you can just not take the trouble to work it out. But if you get curious, you can enjoy the challenge of unscrambling it. OK?'
"The man who said he was relieved when I said I was happy to finish the argument had earlier said he was uncomfortable reading it, because it was like reading someone's private mail because it was personal, and I joked,
"'If you don't like reading our private mail, try reading it with your eyes closed. Perhaps you could play a game where you pretend to read it, and estimate when it's finished, and then open your eyes to see how close you were.'"
Then one of the other girls said, "I was on a forum not long ago when someone replied to something I said by saying something that didn't make sense to me. I told him it didn't, and he joked, 'Well, fortunately, I happen to know a lightning fast cure to your problem. Scratch your head, and gnaw your knuckles. (It's supposed to improve the blood flow or something. Helps improve one's IQ in a matter of days, according to renowned shrinks.)'
"I joked, 'Thanks for the tip. I presume you've tried it out yourself? It's a good thing you've got 301 fingers, isn't it. Or should I say, you did have before you started. Can I borrow some? Perhaps if you take some of your best ones off and send them through the post to me, I can put them on, and then I can gnaw those till they're all tatty, and spare my own? Thank you.'
"There was another time when someone replied to something someone said by saying a couple of incomprehensible words, - maybe Latin for something - I don't know. But I think it was meant to be some kind of put-down or something. I joked, 'Have you? Sorry to hear that. Maybe there's a cream for it.'
"And there was someone on the forum who often wrote posts that were entirely incomprehensible. I don't know if he knew they were, or if he thought he was making sense. One day I joked, 'Are your posts like word searches, so there's a hidden meaning in them, but we have to crack the code to find out what it is? For instance, it might be that every line or alternative line or third line or something contains a word that makes up part of a sentence, and we have to work out which words are part of the sentence, and what the sentence is? Something like that?'
"And on another day, I joked about a story I remember hearing. It's a parable you might have heard, that's actually a bit moving, at least I think so, about a man who had a vision, or dream, where an angel, or God, came and told him to push hard against a rock outside his house to try to move it. He tried and tried for weeks, but it was such a big rock there was no way he could move it. Then God - or the angel - appeared to him again, and he complained that he'd been given an impossible task - the rock was way too difficult for him to move. God or the angel said he'd known he'd never be able to move the rock, but the man should take a look at his body - he had way more strength than he'd had before; his muscles were way bigger, and he looked much more attractive with his sun-tanned skin.
"I think the parable's meant to illustrate that people might think they're doing God's will but things don't always go to plan, and they might not think they're getting anywhere, but sometimes there are benefits they hadn't realised, or else they might face opposition and be discouraged by it, but sometimes they end up wiser for it.
"Anyway, I like that parable, but one day on the forum, I decided to have a bit of a laugh with it. A new person came to the board and introduced himself, and said, 'I believe any conversations that spread the word of Christ are good.'
"Since the place is full of atheists who like to ridicule Christianity, I joked, 'You might have to brave a lot of heckling if you want to do that here. Maybe you could think of your experiences with hecklers as being like that parable of the man who saw a vision of an angel one day telling him to try to move a big rock outside his house by pushing it; he pushed and pushed but it didn't move; pushing it just tired him out at first. Eventually, he became dispirited; but one day, the angel came back to him in another vision and asked him how he was getting on. He complained to the angel that he hadn't achieved a thing.
"'Now this parable has two endings, an atheist version and a Christian version. The Christian version is that the angel said to the man, "No, you haven't moved the rock, but look: Your muscles are a lot bigger, and you're much better-looking, all sun-tanned! Now you can go and get that job on a building site you've always dreamed of without worrying that they'll think you're a wimp."
"'Then the angel went away, and the man realised that the whole thing had been done to get him to exercise more, and that he was more skilled in using his muscles than he'd ever been before. Confidently, he went to visit his friends, sure that Next time someone challenged him to an arm-wrestling match, he'd be more likely to win!'
"I said, 'You might not have heard the end of that parable before, though you might have heard the beginning. I just made the end up.'
"An atheist there said, 'And the atheist version (which isn't possible since most atheists don't believe in angels, and so wouldn't listen to them if they saw one) is that they would use their brain to make a machine to move the rock, and would get the job as an engineer they'd always wanted.'
"I joked, 'Maybe, but actually, the atheist version is that the man's friends came in just after he'd seen the vision and he told them about it, and they concluded that he must be suffering from some kind of mental illness and had the poor thing carted away to a psychiatric hospital.'
"... Yeah, perhaps that bit was in poor taste."
The girls chuckled. Then there was a bit of a pause in the conversation, before it turned serious again, when one of them asked, half-smiling, "So Deborah, what made you want to delve into the bad things Mother Teresa's organisation's done? Is it a hobby of yours to dig up dirt on Christian or Catholic icons and spread it around or something?"
Deborah replied, "No. I just got curious to find out more after I happened to hear those interviews with ex-nuns who used to be in Mother Teresa's organisation. So I read some things on the Internet about it. I found out some pretty bad things. Some people think her caring image was promoted by the Catholic Church because it was good PR for them.
"But one bad thing I heard was that the syringes the nuns used to give medication in the homes weren't sterilised or got rid of after they were used in Mother Teresa's day, but they were just washed in cold or lukewarm water and then used again. I even read that needles were used till they got so blunt that they hurt more when the nuns tried to push them into people's veins, and in Haiti some volunteers offered to buy new ones, but the nuns refused.
"And word got around that the drugs and vaccines they were using might be expired. A German organisation advised people adopting children from Mother Teresa's orphanages to check to see whether the vaccines they'd been given worked, saying some might have passed their sell-by dates or deteriorated because they weren't stored correctly. And all this despite the fact that Mother Teresa's organisation was very rich because they received so many donations after all the publicity they got. It's been estimated that they used to get about 100 million dollars a year! But she seemed to think there was some kind of prestige or religious benefit to her organisation coming across as a poor one, it seems.
"Obviously I can't guarantee that everything I read is true, like I said. You can look it up online and decide for yourselves if you like.
"Some people who used to work for her organisation have written about their experiences online. I read that a woman who used to often go past one of her homes in India when she was growing up, and volunteered in one for a while, used to often see the nuns walking barefoot along the roads in summer, when the roads must have been so hot it must have hurt their feet to walk along them! And it wasn't as if that was necessary because her organisation didn't have the money to buy the nuns shoes; I'm guessing it was decreed that they had to do that as part of Mother Teresa's dogma about how her nuns needed to be as self-sacrificing as possible, because she thought God would like it or something. Or maybe it was to stop them running away.
"And I read there was a BBC reporter who worked undercover as a volunteer in a home Mother Teresa started for disabled children and babies in India, for a week several years after she died, and he said some of the things that went on there were cruel. That might have been at least partly because the nuns were always rushed. Whether that was because they were looking after more children than they could cope with, or because they had to get everything done before their probably lengthy prayer time every day, or something else, who knows! One of the sisters I heard interviewed said they spent hours a day kneeling in prayer in their convents, so who knows if the same thing happened in the homes.
"But I read that the BBC reporter said that instead of slowly and patiently feeding the children and babies, some of the nuns tended to hold their heads in place and force-feed them quickly, despite them coughing and gagging on the food. And there were no nappies, and they were washed in cold water, and there wasn't much soap or disinfectant around. He said beds were washed with dirty water and dirty cloths, and food was prepared on the floor in the corridor. Maybe that's the kind of thing that comes of a belief that suffering and poverty are doing the world good.
"I read an article by someone else who'd volunteered for a while at one of Mother Teresa's homes, who said conditions were really primitive, including toilets that didn't seem to be cleaned that often; there was wee and poo flooding the floor, and people who had bandages on their feet would have to get them soaking wet and filthy when they had to walk through it to get to the loo, and people who couldn't walk had to crawl through it on all fours, because there weren't many wheelchairs and crutches available.
"That ex-volunteer said painful procedures were often carried out on sick people without strong painkillers or local anaesthetic, even though they were obviously in agony, and local anaesthetic was often donated.
"Maybe conditions in the homes are better at some times than they are at others, depending on how caring the nuns are who are in charge at any one time, and how good at organising things they are. I think some volunteers in Mother Teresa's homes have had better experiences than others.
"But I once read a post on a forum by someone who used to be a teacher in a school in a poor part of New York, who said that in 1990, he was given the opportunity to take twenty of the children he taught to India for a while, by a man who'd volunteered for a little while in one of Mother Teresa's homes, who thought it would be a good experience for the children to do that, or to meet the children there. Well, the ones from the school were probably teenagers.
"They travelled around, finding out about the places in India they went to and helping out with various things, and at one point, they were split up into two groups for four days, and one was sent to volunteer at one of Mother Teresa's homes in Calcutta, while the other one volunteered for a medical charity there that was run by a man who was providing free medical care for homeless people in a tent under a bridge.
"The man on the forum said their experiences were really different: The group that worked with the man offering free medical care came away feeling hopeful and enthusiastic to learn new things, having learned something about medicine and efforts to improve the health of the population in the city, and about what could be done to make progress. But the group that volunteered with Mother Teresa's organisation came away a bit traumatised, having spent their time watching sick children lying around suffering, with the only help available being the prayers of nuns who could only mop their brows and change their bed pans and sheets and so on, as if they believed that living in a state of powerlessness to do anything more was somehow noble. The children from New York were just encouraged to pray for the children in the orphanage and help empty bed pans and change their sheets like the nuns did.
"After the trip organisers found out how the atmosphere of hopelessness was affecting that group, they cut the volunteering short, and they spent time at the university in the city instead, learning what was going on there."
The girls agreed that it was a shame that the group that had visited the home run by Mother Teresa's organisation had found that conditions weren't very good.
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