“When I met Mother Teresa, I had been a Christian for three years.”

Mary Poplin, a professor in education at Claremont University, spoke at Iowa State’s second Veritas Forum, which is meant to engage faculty and students in life’s toughest question and the relevance of Jesus Christ.

Poplin told her story of how she became a Christian, met Mother Teresa and how she views life today.

Poplin said she didn’t come from a well-educated family.

“My dad, we think he finished eighth grade. My mom went to school for two years to be a teacher,” Poplin said.

She said she always had a interest in social justice, and grew up watching Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights emerge.

She said growing up she was “living on the edge” and experimenting with alcohol.

“I was experimenting in everything except Christianity,” Poplin said.

She said she studied every new age movement and told people she was spiritual, but not religious.

She eventually went on to study radical Marxism and feminism and said she built her classes around both of those theories.

Poplin said in one of the classes she was teaching she met a young Native American man, the first man that had ever taken her radical feminism class.

She said he had been far more oppressed than anyone else in the class, but was mostly quiet.

Poplin said the man was not naive, but he had a handle on Marxism and wanted to work against oppression and racism of all kinds.

She said after he finished his studies, they began working together on projects and he eventually told her if she ever wanted to do something with her spiritual life that he would help her.

In May 1992, Poplin became a full professor and then in November, Poplin said she had an unshakable dream.

“It was unshakable because I remembered every single detail. It was the first dream of my life that was actually in color,” Poplin said.

After the dream, Poplin had dinner with the man from her class and eventually began exploring Christianity.

A year and a half later, Poplin found herself at a monastery while she was on a retreat.

She said a monk had the monastery visitors watch a film on Mother Teresa.

“I had never given Mother Teresa any thought,” Poplin said.

She said as she watched the film she began to wonder what Christianity had to do with social justice.

“I was really moved by the film. I admired her, but she said Jesus, which I wasn’t comfortable with,” Poplin said.

After viewing the film, Poplin sent a letter asking to work with Mother Teresa’s missionary in Calcutta.

Poplin said most people think of Mother Teresa as a good or extraordinary humanist, which makes people feel they can be just like her.

She said before she met Mother Teresa she began to write Mother Teresa’s story as though she was a secularized person, but soon realized that she was lying about Mother Teresa.

Poplin then told a story about her work in Calcutta.

Poplin said every morning Mother Teresa would go to Mass and she placed her body in between her sisters and the volunteers.

Poplin said she always arrived to Mass early.

“I thought if I could get there early something nice would rub off on me,” Poplin said.

Poplin said one day she was at Mass when a well-dressed Indian woman walked into Mass, found Mother Teresa and began to bow and kiss her feet.

“Mother Teresa became disturbed by this, took the woman’s hands away from her and pointed them toward the crucifix at the front of the wall and said, ‘It’s Him,'” Poplin said. “‘It’s Him, give your thanks to Him.'”

At that point, Poplin said, the woman pulled back and looked at Mother Teresa, at the crucifix, then back at Mother Teresa.

“Mother Teresa called herself a pencil in God’s hands,” Poplin said.

She said they consider their first work to belong to Jesus and to have such a strong prayer life that He would always be working through them.

Poplin said the missionaries work is not only difficult, it’s monotonous, always cleaning up and feeding those in need.

“Mother Teresa said you needed a big push from above to maintain the work,” Poplin said.

Mother Teresa was originally a social studies teacher.

“She didn’t just decide to go out and serve the poor,” Poplin said.

She said when Mother Teresa was 36 she was on her way to a retreat when she had three mystical visions from Jesus, who spoke to her from the cross.

Poplin said Jesus told Mother Teresa to do four things.

She was to create an order of Indian nuns to serve the Indian people, but He didn’t want them to have to become Europeanized.

Second, she was to go into the deepest, darkest holes of the poorest of the poor and to take Him with because He had no one to take Him there.

She was supposed to go to them, not bring them to Him.

Poplin said Mother Teresa and her missionaries have a constitution that forbids them to ever ask for money because they believe as long as they are doing the work of God, He would pay for it.

People from all over the world began sending Mother Teresa money, and she thought every cent was sent from God.

Poplin said Christopher Hitchens found out Mother Teresa was accepting money from corrupted politicians, and he mentioned it in a book about Mother Teresa.

She said Mother Teresa doesn’t read the newspaper, and didn’t realize how controversial the book had been.

One day, Poplin said, she was sitting on a bench and Mother Teresa started telling her that some Hindi students from the university had come and given her some money they had raised from a big fundraiser and she said she was very happy because she had just started a ministry to help better and change the lives of prostitutes.

“I said, ‘Mother, there are people who write books about you who said you don’t need any more money,'” Poplin said. “She said, ‘Oh, the book, I haven’t read it. It matters not, he’s forgiven.'”

Poplin said Hitchens heard Mother Teresa had said this and was irate, and she couldn’t help but tell Mother Teresa that.

“She looked at me and said, ‘It’s not me. It’s God. God has forgiven him. Ask the sisters,'” Poplin said.

Poplin said she then asked the sisters, who told her they had passed around one copy of the book, then after all the sisters had read it, they fasted for a week.

Once the sisters’ fast was over, they asked God what lesson there was to learn from the book.

Their answer was that it was a call for them to be more holy.

Poplin said Mother Teresa believed in radical forgiveness, which was modeled best in Jesus’ death.

“My pastor once said unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies,” Poplin said.

Poplin said she learned a lesson in forgiveness while working for Mother Teresa.

“When I became a Christian, I began to grieve over two abortions I’ve had and I began to confess them to God,” Poplin said.

She said when she was on her way back home from her missionary work one day, a Father had asked her to join some missionary workers who were working on forgiveness.

The Father asked the group to get a card and on one side write what we wanted to be forgiven for and on the other the people they wanted to forgive, then by the elation of God burn the cards.

That night, Poplin was walking along a river, heading to the place where the group was going to burn the cards when she had a once-in-a-lifetime encounter.

“In my spirit — this only happened once to me — I hear a man’s voice. I don’t know if you would have heard it if you were walking next to me,” Poplin said. “The man’s voice said, ‘Who are you to not forgive someone I have forgiven?'”

Poplin said she heard the voice two more times, and after the third time she stopped and dropped to her knees.

She said, “Lord I don’t know who you are talking about.”

Poplin said she heard a reply that said, “I forgave you the first time you asked, and I don’t want you to ask again.”

Poplin said she was being asked to forgive herself.

“Not a single scripture in the Bible says that anyone forgave themselves. That is a secular psychological principal,” Poplin said.