MORALITY AND RELIGION
or
WAS MOTHER TERESA REALLY A BIG BITCH?

I got a really thought provoking comment on yesterday's Life of Brian post, which I adapted for facebook:

Chris OK, I started watching anyway, and I have a couple responses to Muggeridge's first points:

"Iif you were to make a list of all the greatest works of art in all the fields, ...you would find this scene of the incarnation, ...has played the greatest part."

It's kind of silly to presume that had we not had Jesus, we would not have had these works of art. We may not have had these *specific* works of art, but without a doubt we would still have great works of art. The subject matter is not what moved the progress of artistic techniques.

He also says that Mother Teresa said herself that social workers help fellow men for an ideal, and she does so for Jesus, and if Jesus was gone, or discredited, then her work is gone.

Am I the only one who lost respect for Mother Teresa with that statement? I have MUCH more respect for people who help others just because it's the right thing to do than people who only do so because JESUS said it's the right thing to do.

Like I said, thought provoking. It got my gears turning:

Ron Christopher Hitchens made a related criticism of Mother Teresa when she died, which, of course, pissed off people around the world.

Here's the long and short. Teresa became famous and influential but continued to do the same kind of work with the poor she had been doing for decades.  She could have used her influence to actually make a difference in the lives of the people to whom she gave only temporary and limited comfort, if even that.  That is, it really was within her ability to affect the circumstances that make people poor, at the UN, with various governments, with corporations, with NGOs.  It wasn't a sure thing, of course, but she didn't even try.  She just continued to change the dirty bandage even though she had a real shot at healing the wound.

Hitchens called it glorification of poverty, rather than actually helping the poor, essentially using the poor to shine her own pious star.  Actually, given her coziness with wealthy donors, Hitchens called her a complete fraud.

But yeah, you make a really good point about Christianity and morality.  I, for one, have some real problems with the notion I was taught as a Southern Baptist that only accepting Jesus as savior makes one want to do good things: I have known numerous "saved" people who are total assholes, who embrace ideas and ideology that would make Jesus vomit for days were he still alive.  By the same token, I've also known "saved" people who are truly good souls, but I've got a strong sense they would be like that whether they were believers or not.  Clearly, morality comes from within, not from some supernatural force that possesses us and alters our desires.

Here's the original Hitchens essay that provoked calls for his head. And here's some info about Hitchens, who sadly ended up being a right-wing tool in the "War on Terror," but no one can doubt that when he was on, he was definitely on. 

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