ESCAPING MARY’S ROOM: why we went to Lebanon and Syria
Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Frank Jackson’s book Mary’s Room is a famous thought experiment in the philosophy of truth.
It imagines a brilliant scientist, Mary, who knows every physical fact about colour — wavelengths, optics, brain processes — yet has lived her entire life confined to a black‑and‑white room. When she finally escapes the room and sees a red rose for the first time, she discovers something breathtakingly new: what red actually looks like.
This challenges the idea that someone can possess the “truth” – all available facts and theories about a phenomenon (like colour vision) – without actually encountering it.
This applies deeply to faith and theology as well.
THE SETUP
Mary has lived her whole life in a black‑and‑white room, seeing only grayscale. Even though she has never seen colour or experienced its beauty, she has mastered the science behind it. She becomes a brilliant scientist who knows every physical fact about colour vision — wavelengths, neurophysiology, optics, brain states, everything. But she has never touched the beauty she studies. She knows the mechanics, but not the wonder.
THE KEY MOMENT
When Mary finally escapes the room and steps into a garden, she sees a red rose for the first time. Her knowledge of colour turns into a tangible beauty and she gains a new level of insight: the lived, qualitative experience of colour — what philosophers call qualia.
Her knowledge and understanding of colour now moves to a deeper level, one that only becomes possible through an encounter.
THE ARGUMENT
Before leaving the room, Mary knows all the physical facts about colour. Her knowledge is vast, even superior. She could teach others the physics of colour despite never having seen it herself. But the moment she encounters colour, she learns something new — something her theories could not give her.
Jackson’s reasoning is simple: If Mary learns something new by experiencing it, then her enormous store of facts did not give her a complete understanding of truth. Only through experience was her truth made whole.
THE THEOLOGICAL LAYER
Mary’s Room echoes a deep Christian truth: truth without experience remains incomplete. Not false — but not yet full. We can study the word of God, attend Bible studies and even obtain degrees in theology. We can preach, teach and prophesy. But unless we “taste and see” and “go and encounter”, our truth will be limited to theory only.
God Himself set the example.
Jesus never lived in a black‑and‑white room. Everything He taught, He embodied. He touched and smelled the roses – so to speak: He encountered those who hated Him and returned hostilty with love. He experienced the “rose” of persecution and asked on their behalf for forgiveness. He touched the lepers and fed the hungry. He lived the life He called others to imitate. His truth was not merely spoken; it was lived.
The Incarnation is God stepping out of the “black‑and‑white room” of omniscience into the lived experience of human suffering. God did not save the world by knowing everything about us. God saved the world by entering our condition.
This gives followers of Christ a powerful purpose:
- Advocacy is incarnational. Speaking for the voiceless is only truth when we practice it.
- Solidarity is leaving the room. Feeling sorry for the vulnerable in our communities means little if we remain in comfort with no involvement.
- Mission is refusing to love people only in theory. The unreached will remain unreached as long as we turn a biblical truth into church entertainment.
- Forgiveness is only real when we are harmed. A life without forgiveness is a life without truth. If we hate our enemies or watch the hungry without feeding them, we contradict the truth we claim to confess.
THE CHURCH AND THE ROOM
Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, the church is not the garden — it is the room. It is the place where we study beauty, we name it, we theologise it, we sing about it, and systematize it. We embrace the mystery of “colour” and we even have a deep sense that we are encountering it. But we are still in the room. We trace its wavelengths in sermons, measure its beauty in liturgies, and proclaim it wonder in worship. We know the physics of grace, the extent of mercy, the theology of resurrection. But we have not yet stepped outside to encounter the application.
Inside the room, beauty is described. Outside, beauty is encountered. Inside, we speak of the rose; outside, we smell it, bleed from its thorns, and are healed by its fragrance. The church, for all its sacred intention, often becomes Mary’s laboratory — a place of immaculate theory, untouched by the colour of life.
To experience beauty, we must leave the room. We must walk into the garden where suffering and wonder coexist, where our confessions become reality, where theology becomes flesh, and where truth is practiced. Only there — among the roses, the dust, and the sunlight — does beauty cease to be an idea and become a revelation.
And that is why we chose to go Lebanon and Syria: To taste and see.
ENTER SYRIA AND LEBANON
Mary’s Room helped us recognise something essential about Syria and Lebanon: You can know every fact about a people’s suffering and still not know what it is like to live inside it. Until you know that, your moral imagination stays thin, your compassion underdeveloped, and your theology untested.
Syria and Lebanon do not need more spectators. There are enough Marys in the room. They need people willing to cross the threshold from knowledge to presence — from the science of colour to tasting and seeing.
MARY’S ROOM AS A LENS ON SYRIA AND LEBANON
Mary knew all the facts about colour. She had her own understanding, convictions and images of colour. But she never experienced it.
The world knows all the facts about Syria and Lebanon — death tolls, displacement numbers, political analyses, satellite images — but most have never felt the reality from the inside.
The gap between information and experience is the moral wound that haunts these two nations.
We can read every UN report on Lebanon and discuss the roles of Hezbolah and Israel, and still not know the terror of hearing drones at night. We can study every political analysis of Lebanon and still not know the exhaustion of living through collapsing currency, rolling blackouts, and the sound of shelling across the border. We can know the statistics of famine and still not know the humiliation of a father unable to feed his children.
Mary’s Room exposes the difference between knowing about suffering and encountering suffering.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR SYRIA AND LEBANON
In Lebanon, the world is drowning in data — air strikes, casualty numbers, millions displaced, satellite images of destruction. But these facts do not automatically produce compassion or moral clarity.
Mary’s Room tells us why: Facts without experience do not change the heart. People outside Lebanon often choose to remain in a “black‑and‑white room”: They see numbers, not names. They see geopolitics, not grief. They see arguments, not amputated children. They choose sides because there are no encounters, only theories
The world debates Lebanon and Syria in grayscale while the people live in full, unbearable colour.
This is why our visit made a difference. This is why our advocacy matters. We help people leave the room — even briefly — and glimpse the human reality behind the statistics.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CHURCHES
Mary’s Room becomes a call to discipleship:
- Move from information to incarnation. Don’t just know the facts — meet the people, hear the stories, carry the names.
- Move from analysis to empathy. Facts alone do not produce compassion; encounter does.
- Move from distance to solidarity. The church must be the community that refuses to stay in the grayscale room.
- Move from “awareness” to action. Once Mary sees color, she cannot unsee it. Once the church sees Syria and Lebanon in full color, it cannot return to indifference.
Taste and See!