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Sharpen Your Senses

If matter matters to God, then it ought to matter to us.

One way to realize that matter matters is to sense it more fully— with all our beings, so that we can better sense God’s being. Augustine said, “I can experience far more than I can understand about the Trinity.”[1] There’s a sense-based knowing that transcends words. While our senses alone can never get us to God, they can bring us closer.

So the question becomes, Is there a way to sharpen our senses so we can more fully engage God’s matter-loving heart?

In Psalms 38 and 51, David prays with his lips, mouth, tongue, intestines, muscles, bones, skin, thighs, heart, lungs, eyes, ears, and throat.[2] It’s this kind of whole-bodied engagement that enables a more sense-able engagement of God through science. This is how God made us. We’re not just rational beings; we’re embodied, multi-sensory beings. When things go off the rails, we feel sick to our stomachs. When we’re in danger or in love, our hearts race. We are stilled when confronted with beauty. The Christian faith is a whole-bodied faith. According to the Bible, to know something is not merely a rational exercise. To really know is to live out what you know with all your physical being.

[1] St. Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Signet, 2001), XIII, 11, 12.

[2] Belden Lane, Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 92.

Take Action:

Keep this sense of God’s nearness through His creation in mind as you engage the discoveries that fill our science-filled world.

When a new discovery catches your attention, ask,

• How does this specific scientific method or technology reflect the sensing nature of God?

• How do the scientists and technologists—in wielding this scientific method or technology—image the sensing nature of God?

Write down any Scripture passages or theological truths that come to mind as you engage these questions. Bring God’s sensing truth in the Scriptures into conversation with God’s sensing truth in the science. Let them co-illuminate one another.

Pray:

Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth, quicken my senses. Help me to see, hear, taste, smell, and feel Your presence more. You made my senses; help me fully be in this body of mine—in this body of Yours. As You surround me with a universe filled with creatures, re-create me and renew my sense of You.

To learn more about what neurons, giant squids, and supernovae reveal about our Creator, consider this book: God Speaks Science, by John Van Sloten