Prof. Arthur Brooks writes in OpinionJournal that too much has been made of Mother Theresa’s admission in her private papers that she felt “terrible sorrow about her life, describing it in terms of ‘dryness,’ ‘darkness’ and ’sadness.’” He goes on to point out that studies show that as a class, religious people say they are much happier than secular or sort-of religious persons, and that this is true regardless of the identity of the religion itself or the culture of the respondents.

I left the following observation in the comments to Prof. Brooks’ essay:

Professor Brooks does indeed raise an interesting fact about religious life but it is not an “inconvenient truth”. Mother Teresa’s “sorrow about her life” is not a reflection of dissatisfaction with her religious life; rather, it is an effect of the sort of rarified consciousness that animated her mission until she died. If she had retired to some religious retreat in the south of France in her later years and wrote these words-O.K. But she did not. She continued her work in the slums of Calcutta caring for the dying and the unimaginably poor.

Mother Teresa’s words reflect, instead, the writing of Ecclesiastes. Kohelet, the author of Ecclesiastes, repeatedly tells us that life is “futility of futilities, all is futile”. However, Kohelet concludes “banish anger from your heart and remove evil from your flesh-for childhood and youth are futile”. The timeless message, echoed in Asian traditions as well, focuses on the need to override the apparent emptiness of existence in the world with our own righteous actions and an awareness of accountability.

At the core of leading a religious life (even once a week) is a sense that there is a larger meaning/process that transcends our experience, that endures beyond our life. The fact that so many Americans manifest and process a religious component to their personal wellbeing speaks volumes about how they come to terms with the world in all its forms. Like Mother Teresa, Americans know the difficulties in the real world; yet, they continue to act with civic pride and civil discourse in a gentile fashion. Professor Rodney Stark of Baylor University tells us that Americans have the highest church attendance in the world. Perhaps that is why so many theological monopolies fear American culture.

See what you think.