Reading the book A Faith of Many Rooms – Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity has been an expansive experience, likely to please its author, Debie Thomas.
The child of immigrants from Kerala, India, speaking Malayalam as her first language, Thomas’ personal and ethnic background prove fertile soil into which her spiritual and religious journey took root and grew a wide and deep understanding of Jesus’ own words in John 14:2, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.”
I have long been a fan of Debie Thomas’ insights into Scripture, many of which can be found on www.journeywithjesus.net.
Thomas takes us into the Malayalam and Christian origins of her life by employing the cherished term Nadhe, a Malayalam word with no equivalent in English but refers to birthplace, homeland, heart of belonging all rolled into one.
While born in Kerala, Thomas grew up in the U.S. as a child of immigrant parents. Each chapter in the book explores our deep yearning to belong through the personal lens of Thomas’ own life and search for God, a life characterized by a bicultural reality, a sense of dislocation, her feisty personality and racial tensions.
In our attempt to belong in a faith community, Thomas describes how we often end up, inadvertently or intentionally, creating cramped theological and spiritual dwellings, with little room to move or welcome others who might bring a different flavour of faith.
In our zeal to build our spiritual home, complete with boundaries, protocols and protective shields, we forget the radical hospitality of Jesus Himself. But speaking of the many rooms in God’s house, Thomas reminds us that Jesus revealed God’s nature as spacious and welcoming to all created in the Divine image and likeness.
Her chapter on dissonance and paradox is particularly poignant, bringing an important corrective to the cramped spiritual spaces we create even with the best of intentions: “Again and again, the way of Jesus invites us to hold opposing truths together, in pairings that seem impossible.
This is not to confound us but to show us how wide and spacious the realm of God really is” (p. 141). Thomas recalls a parish retreat leader who was both a pastor and a musician.
“It’s hard sometimes, he told us, to listen to other people’s music. Our own songs, and song genres, are precious to us; they carry deeply meaningful associations and memories. … Other people’s music, on the other hand, can grate on our ears. Listen to other people’s music can be painful, irritating or even impossible … if we don’t cultivate a practice of curious, generous, sacrificial love” (p. 156).
The analogy with musical genres, and cherishing our own favourite tunes, has its parallels in other areas of life.
In a culture rife with echo chambers of like-minded voices, including in the church, we have lost the ability to practice curious, generous and sacrificial love.
Debie Thomas wonders what an active loving of dissonance and paradox might look like in the church: “Can I listen with love to the angry song of the laid-off coal miner whose views on immigration might well be tied to his dwindling capacity to feed his family?
The song of the pro-life activist whose passion for the unborn child is as genuinely compassion-driven as mine for the incarcerated teenager or the refugee? The song of the conservative pastor who genuinely doesn’t see a way to reconcile the authority of the Bible he loves with the sanctity of gay marriage?” (p. 158).
In our zeal to sing our own songs and keep them safe, Christians on all sides of ideological and denominational stripes close hearts and minds to the songs that grate on the ears; all that spells difference, disagreement and contradiction.
Thomas’ challenge to embrace dissonance and paradox makes clear that, left to our own efforts, this task feels downright impossible: “But maybe that’s the greatest paradox of all: that God can accomplish in us what we cannot accomplish in ourselves. Left to myself, I will never love as I ought to. That’s why I’ve come to cherish the Way of Dissonance. God is okay with the many both-ands I carry around inside of me.”
I have long felt that the test of our faith does not lie in the particularities of creeds, denominations or even ideological positions on salient social and ethical issues. Jesus loved, radically and inclusively. Period. The test of our faith lies in the quality of our loving: “Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17).
Pope Francis boldly declared early in his papacy that truth is a relationship patterned on the Trinity. He made an important, often overlooked, point, that is echoed in Thomas’ book.
The test of our faith lies in our capacity to make space for another with respect and affection, especially those we dislike, disagree with or whose favourite songs irritate us.
Loving Jesus ought to increase our desire to move our relating, loving and conversing to a higher, more mature and more reconciling, ground of mercy and grace: “Again and again, the way of Jesus invites us to hold opposing truths together, in pairings that seem impossible.”
Our quest for spiritual belonging, for a Nadhe, is deep and personal and intimate, a vital and noble undertaking for every person. A wholesome, liberating and love-giving belonging requires maturity and healing of life’s wounds.
However, the boundaries of our spiritual home, however necessary, can become barriers to others who knock on our doors looking for acceptance, mercy and understanding.
Debie Thomas’ eloquent sharing shows a creative and faith-filled way to grow and cherish a holy and mature belonging while holding open the door of welcome.
I join Debie Thomas in aspiring to that hard-to-find sweet spot that can grow an expansive and spacious faith in my heart and mind after the example of Jesus himself:
“In my Father’s house there are many rooms.” (John 14:2)
