Is Faith Necessary for a Moral Life?

I have been grappling with this question ever since. It became more relevant in the light of the publication of the diary of Mother Teresa of Calcutta wherein she expressed doubts about the existence of God: “In my own soul, I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.” Despite these doubts, her “midnight of the soul”, Mother Teresa worked and committed herself to the poor. But what if Mother Teresa just accepted the fact that there is no God or that there is no sufficient proof that God exists? Would she have continued to serve the poor? Or was her service to the poor anchored on her belief in God? Would the quality of service to the poor be diminished by a lack of faith? Is it less noble? Is faith needed to love other people?

With more and more people coming out in the open and declaring that they do not believe in a “God” or in “intelligent design”, I think the question is proper. Those who believe in God argue that without faith, the world will be such a terrible place (of course, one can argue that, in fact, with all the beliefs that we have, the world is already a terrible place), that the only thing that keeps men and women from being selfish, or vicious or violent, to put it in another way, the only thing that makes persons virtuous or good, is their belief in a “God”. So the question is: would people be immoral or less virtuous if they do not believe in God? I think (not believe) that men and women can be moral, good and virtuous even without faith or even if they believe that there is no such being as “God”. Faith is not necessary for a moral life. In fact, it is faith or belief that has made this world a terrible place. Faith and religion (or rather the insistence that one’s faith or religion is the true faith or religion) has been the cause so much suffering in the world. As Albert Einstein once said: “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”

Grace

When I was still in college, a friend of mind gave me a copy of an essay by Paul Tillich on “grace”. I guess it was what I (then a troubled young man) needed. I would like to share them with you today.

“Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Savior, or that the Bible contains the truth … It would be better to refuse God and the Christ and the Bible than to accept Them without grace. For if we accept without grace, we do so in the state of separation, and can only succeed in deepening the separation. We cannot transform our lives, unless we allow them to be transformed by that stroke of grace. It happens; or it does not happen. And certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it shall not happen so long as we think, in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it. Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’ If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed.”
I guess in the end, transformation and action is the most important. As my favorite basque saint would sometimes say: love is better shown in deeds than in words.