As a young man just out of medical school, my father abandoned the possibility of a lucrative practice in the U.S. and took off for Paraguay, South America. He was on a mission to provide medical services for people living in that remote and impoverished country.

Undoubtedly, he did this partly because of his love of adventure. But mostly, my father felt called to carry out God’s work. He firmly believed that faith by itself, if it does not lead to good deeds, is dead. Serving others was not one bullet point among many goals for my father. It was the overarching aim of everything he did.

Not unlike Mother Teresa.

In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, the woman whose good works had grown from a one-person activity in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of care for the needy, said, “St. John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live?”

But are good works without faith also dead?

In my prior blog, I admitted that I have failed my father’s tests of true religious faith (please see I Failed My Dad’s Tests of Faith). And yet, my husband and I have spent time doing what people of faith might otherwise consider good works: We have volunteered to tutor homeless people who are re-entering the workforce. We donate money to a number of worthwhile charities. And we love serving the poor in soup kitchens.

I know that many ‘believers’ would say that good works without faith are as dead as faith without good works. They might quote the Bible verse in Isaiah 64 that states, “All our works are as filthy rags to God apart from Christ.”

We came across my father’s writing about this just the other day. He said, “I never felt guilty about giving a Bible to someone that had been donated by an unbeliever.”

And here’s a line from his writings as an old man — looking back on his life — that really makes me smile: “What I especially don’t like is that some people speak so all-knowing about who is and who is not a believer. To support the leprosy mission we founded, I took money from people who were not evangelical. Some well-meaning folks said this was not right. I am still of the belief that it is right.”

My dear father, a man of deep faith, was also ultra-practical.

He said, “Leftover things from those who are not believers can still be used for God’s glory — it’s certainly better than having them rot.”