Our Intermingled Tapestry of Spiritual & Physical Life
What I miss about Mother Teresa the most.
“You are traveling to Cambodia? Why? ”
“Oh,” I usually respond, “I’m traveling to visit Jon (pseudonym), a young boy whom my family is sponsoring and who lives at a children’s home dedicated towards preventing children from entering the sex trade.”
That’s the easy answer that I usually tell people. But truth be told, if prevention was my only goal, then there would be no need to visit Jon in-person; all I would have to do is keep up my monthly donations to support the day-to-day operations of his home.
I want to meet Jon because I’ve learned that to help him, or anyone for that matter, means much more than meeting his material needs. It also means addressing his spiritual needs:his sense of self-worth, his identity, and his hope for the future.
Although Mother Teresa is famously known for how she ministered to people’s physical needs, that was never her primary purpose. Read this excerpt from a Christianity Today article by Rebecca Samuel Shah:
“… even as [Mother Teresa] set up institutions to resolve world hunger, she talked of people’s hunger for God and their inalienable value as creatures made in his image. Material needs, she insisted, can be easily satisfied, but caring for a person’s spiritual needs is more important. In fact, she regarded it as her primary calling.”
Shah expounds: Poverty is not “always reducible to material factors,” as “it often involves deprivation of dignity and self-worth.” A low perception of one’s value can very well lead to a sense of hopelessness about the future and destructive behaviors, reinforcing a person’s marginalization.
These days, it’s common for missions-oriented organizations to focus exclusively on material needs: building homes, feeding the poor, providing medical care, etc. But God created human beings with a spirit as well. The spiritual and physical are intertwined; if we are to truly respect those whom we are helping, we have to treat them as whole persons.
Jon met me for the first time within in a few hours of posting this article somewhere in Cambodia.
