To be able to leave the cocoon of your comfort zone is a terrific effort. To get out of the plushy systems gifted to you as a citizen of a developed country and get down on your knees in the mud and grime of a city and country to which you owe nothing is not a joke.
I find it unfathomable. I have a strong sense of humanity. I believe in equality and fairness. I pay my taxes and sometimes give money to charity and pay lip service to the poor. I work at my profession in a fair manner and pocket the money that I get from it. Then what do I do? I just go to my comfortable home, eat my ample meals and sleep in my nicely made bed.
What does that make me? A bloody normal person.
I seethe at injustices to the poor. I bleed in my heart when I see images of children starving and in pain. My brain thinks about how countries and systems can help reduce misery. In my mind I sincerely desire happiness for the world at large.
What does that make me? Still, a bloody normal person.
What did Mother Theresa have in mind when she went out to the destitute in Calcutta?
What prompted her to give her life over to an effort that made a small change in a then (And still?) a poor country?
There are many possibilities. She could have been inspired by the image of the Christ in gospels who exhorted people to do good.
She might have had a very serving and altruistic mind from the start, which made her interested in religion and god, and then she could have transformed into an institution of charity.
She might have believed that this might ensure her a place in heaven.
She might have believed ardently in her faith and wanted people who saw her work to be inspired into Christianity. She might have believed that that would also give them eternal life after death and hope in this life.
Or, it might have been a combination of all the above factors.
We have to learn exactly what motivated her, read her mind, and then judge her worth, don’t we?
I don’t think so.
Are we aware of our own subconscious desires and motivations that guide our actions? What motivates fundamentalists of any religion?
Believing that all others outside our faith are contemned and contemptible is evil.
Beheading and hacking cartoonists and writers to death are evil.
An administrative system looking on as spectators when criminals loot, rape and butcher a community of people is evil.
Service that involves personal sacrifice is good.
One can look at the motives. And are the motives sufficiently evil.
Think simply. There are no blacks and whites. But let us not mix everything into a gooey grey cynical picture.
