Encountering God and Each Other

An Interview with Rev. Dr. John J. Thatamanil

In the 200^th episode of In Good Faith, Steve sits down with Reverend Dr. John J. Thatamanil to discuss the importance of interfaith work. Here, he shares with Steve how his approach to speaking with people of other faiths has changed over the years. Dr. John also explains how his upbringing influenced his understanding of interfaith dialogue.

I wonder if I could maybe be a little personal and ask about how you grew up. What feels like an anchor to you in your spiritual life?

I grew up in an Indian Christian church called the Mar Toma Church. Mar means Saint, roughly, and Toma is for Thomas. There is a longstanding tradition that Saint Thomas, the doubting apostle, came to India in 52 AD.

When I came to the US at nine, I started asking questions: What does it mean to be Indian? How am I distinct from cultures already here in the US? My particular church was pretty evangelical, so that was really a continuity, not a distinction.

Our tradition, despite being evangelical, is open to learning from other traditions. My senior year of high school, I read what was then called The Religions of Man by Huston Smith, a classic textbook, now called The World's Religions.

When I read the chapters on Hinduism and Buddhism, those really lit me up. I thought, wow, there are entire parts of Indian life that I know nothing about because I largely grew up within a Christian milieu. That hooked me. Of course, the first introduction was textual, but then pretty quickly I went to college and had suite mates who were Hindu and Muslim. Then your worldview completely gets blown open because you realize, oh, these are wonderful human beings.

One of the features of growing up in a kind of evangelical context was that I grew up feeling like it was my obligation to win the world to Christ. Let me give you a feel for what this means. This was one of the songs I was taught in childhood: Must I go in empty handed? Must I meet my Savior so? Not one soul with which to greet Him. Must I empty handed go?

My Hindu and Muslim friends, particularly my Hindu friend, said that my early engagements with him were very much marked by a kind of evangelical flavor. It took me a while to realize A, I wasn't going to succeed, and B, I'm really interested in his own ways of living and being in the world. This is another person who is walking their life of faith with integrity, with faithfulness, and I have much to learn from them.

Oh, that’s beautiful. Have you been able to put your finger on why you believe in something divine, whether that's God, ultimate reality, Jesus?

I grew up very fortunate in some ways with a deeply religious family. Part of the tradition is to have family prayer every night. Every time my dad prayed, and he usually did the praying at the end of reading, the man was profoundly moved. I could feel in my bones that something was happening here; something not to be reduced or eliminated or explained.

To be a bit autobiographical, one of the things that my spiritual director has commended that I do is adopt a form of praying without ceasing. I'm very elementary at this. I'm just a baby at it. In many Christian traditions, you can, throughout the day, say something like, “into thy hands, I commend my spirit.”

And of course, whenever I do that, I think, one of these times will be the last. I will say, “into thy hands, I commend my spirit” and I shall be no longer. There's a way in which this practice tunes me to the reality of my passing and my mortality. It's a way of keeping to Paul's commandment: pray without ceasing.

Your most recent book, “Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity,” I'm assuming this circling the elephant refers to a notable parable of several people with different angles.

Indeed. To my knowledge, it is the oldest narrative in any of the world's religious traditions to explain how we might have different accounts of what God is like. In inter-religious conversations, we use the word ultimate reality because God is a primarily Christian term, although, of course, with roots in Jewish traditions.

In the story, as it's usually told, a king gathers a group of blind men around an elephant and asks them, “What is it that you are in the presence of?” Immediately, chaos ensues. Because, according to the story, one touches up against the side of the elephant and says, “this is a wall.” And the other one grabs the pointy tusk and says, “you fool, this is, this is clearly a spear.” Yet another grabs the tail and says, “Both of you are fools. This is a rope.” And so forth.

Then, a sighted passerby comes, or the king, then explains to them that they're in the presence of an elephant. This story, even though it is thousands of years old, has fallen out of favor in academic circles for bad reasons. I still love the story. I don't think we're done thinking about it. First of all, each of the blind persons is right. They're right about what they assert.

They are all right, and they disagree with each other.

Exactly. How could that be? Well, they're right when they stick to what they know, but they go wrong when they deny what the other person has experienced.

That is a very important phrase, the sentence you just said: they're right when they stick to what they know, but not when they deny what the other person claims to know.

Absolutely. And the other feature of this story is that none of us are stuck in one position. We can, hence the title of the book, circle the elephant. We can actually walk over and try to see how the other sees ultimate reality or God. We do that by speaking with them in conversation and reading their text with them.

There's the practice of scriptural reasoning where, classically, Jews, Christians, and Muslims read each other's scriptures. Then, room is made for new interpretations that emerge because somebody's coming to the text with completely open eyes. Something delightful emerges as people learn to learn with and from each other.

When you put a scripture from another tradition in an interreligious student body's presence and get them reading in small groups each other's scriptures, there's such joy. There's a palpable sense of excitement about discovery.

Are people sometimes hesitant to circle the elephant because they are afraid they'll forget where their starting place was?

I think that's a legitimate fear. Many of us who work in interfaith dialogue encourage people to be well grounded in their own traditions. One of the oldest maxims in the literature is by Professor Max Müller who says, “He who knows one, knows none.” If you only know your own tradition, you don't really know what religion is because you have nothing to contrast it to.

There's a paradox at the heart of interfaith dialogue. In some ways, you only learn your own tradition by venturing out. But here's the other side of the paradox: if you're not somewhat grounded in your own tradition, it's hard to engage in that venture with confidence.

I have a little bit of frustration, which probably means you're helping me learn something here. It seems like if something is an ultimate reality, we should all be able to arrive at it somehow. Are we as human beings only equipped for glimpses of an ultimate reality? And that's why we're not all unified? What do you think?

Oh, that's such a fantastic question. Almost all of our traditions insist on what fancy theologians call apophasis. This means that all of our words fall away from being adequate to God or ultimate reality. But, many of our traditions also say that even if our words fall away from being adequate, our experiences might not. That there is a sense in which we can grow in greater proximity and intimacy with ultimacy.

If you think you know your partner or your spouse, and you know them completely, chances are your relationship is on perilous ground. There's a sense in which one of the great joys of any real relationship and vital relationship is that your partner remains a mystery to you. The minute you say, “I know her,” there's a kind of putting the person in a box. You've figured out certain categories that you have to stereotype or reduce the other, but, in fact, any other person is also a kind of mystery. Yet, you can grow in greater intimacy with that person. I think the same dynamic operates with ultimate reality.

I think it's quite exciting and actually reduces fear to learn about and understand other traditions. Then, we can sort of relax and frankly love each other. Have you experienced that?

One of the great joys of interfaith dialogue is interfaith friendship. When you move into deep friendship with people whose spiritual life is so deep and so profound that you kind of think of them as your teachers, then there's real dialogue and real trust. Then we can let go of the boundaries that keep us separated from each other.

We don't necessarily have to agree. Which two friends agree about everything? I’m not sure about the idea that interfaith dialogue is fundamentally about coming to a consensus about anything. That's the neat thing about the elephant story, eventually you can put together the elephant. But God?

Maybe bigger than an elephant?

Maybe bigger than an elephant. I think the goal is not consensus. The goal is, among other things, the richness of interfaith friendship.

One of the things I worry about is that way too often in modern life, we have become belief centered. What does it mean to be religious? It's to believe something. Well, for a lot of traditions in the world, the real action isn't at the level of belief, but at the level of practice. But in fact, when you talk to a Hindu, it would be better to ask, “What do you do?” than “What do you believe?”

Part of what I'm trying to teach my students and my communities is practice trumps belief every time. These practices shape our desires more than any set of convictions I say I hold. My hope is that my students will turn their attention far more to spiritual disciplines than wrangling about beliefs.

I am convinced that if we say we love our neighbor of another tradition, but we know nothing about them, we might be lying to ourselves. I think love and knowledge go hand in hand. How can I love someone if I don't know them? If I don't understand what centers their lives? I think that there's something very profound about interfaith dialogue as a fulfillment of the call to love your neighbor.

I don't engage in interfaith dialogue for some idle curiosity. I do it because I want to fulfill the Lord's injunction to love my neighbor. If my neighbor happens to be a neighbor of another faith, then I should learn what they cherish.

John Thatamanil is a professor at Union Theological Seminary. He teaches courses in the areas of comparative theology, theologies of religious diversity, and Hindu-Christian dialogue, among others.

On the In Good Faith podcast, host Steven Kapp Perry aims to build bridges of understanding between religions. In talking with believers of different faiths, he highlights personal experience and commonalities across tradition.

Art by Anonymous, sourced from The Comet Book

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full episode here.