I spent a good deal of time last night talking to my wife about spirituality. We were discussing our plans for 2014 and how we can bring more glory to God in our rapidly changing lives. This led to a conversation about why we have always been spiritual people. If you consider yourself spiritual, maybe these thoughts will help articulate how you feel. If you don’t feel like you are spiritual, I would love to hear your opinion on the matter.
Consider a parable for a moment:
A man and his blind friend are sitting in a cafe across from an art gallery, enjoying conversation over a couple of lattes. The sighted man, upon noticing a particularly beautiful piece of art in the window across the way, attempts to explain the beauty to his friend. He explains the shapes, to which his friend nods approval. However, when he begins to describe the colours, the blind friend stops him.
“Colour does not exist.”
The man is dumbfounded. He knows there are colours, he can see them. He tries to explain the concept to the blind man.
“Oh, I’ve heard of colour before, I just don’t buy it. There isn’t really any reason to believe in colour.
The man tries to explain how beautiful colour is.
“It doesn’t sound that beautiful to me. If it really exists, why haven’t I experienced it?”
Try as the man might, he cannot convince his friend of the existence of colour.
“I get that you believe in colour. I also know other blind people who believe in colour. But without proof, why should I believe?”
That question haunts my thoughts all the time.
What if some of us are born with a greater sense of the divine? What if some people can see God’s brushstrokes across the canvas of Creation? For these people, it seems almost silly to think that this world is all there is because they can “see” another world that exists just beyond our grasp.
I’m not the only person to think this way. My theological predecessors referred to this “spiritual sight” as the sensus divinitatis. They believed that humankind was created with the ability to be aware of God, but many lost this ability due to our fallen nature. Some see the divine unclearly, creating belief systems that get some things right and others wrong. Some lose the ability to see God at all.
I wonder why. Why can I see God everywhere? Why is it so clear to me that there is a grand, divine Creator, yet others cannot see this Creator at all? Is my sensus divinitatis more attuned than some of my friends?
If this is true, perhaps it is one of the reasons I love fantasy so dearly. I look around at this world and know that this is not all there is. I easily believed in magic as a child, because a world without magic made no sense at all. Of course there is something that is unseeable, untouchable, yet affects our world in powerful ways. The world makes more sense with courageous heroes, terrible dragons, and mystical wizards. Even if God has commanded us not to make use of sorcery and divination ourselves, I still don’t think that everything is explainable by empirical methodology.
If the sensus divinitatis theory is correct, then I am saddened that there are people who are blind to the beauty of God. This world, even with all its beauty and wonder, pales in comparison to the world beyond.
If the theory is wrong, then why have humans been such spiritually minded beings for so long?
I realize this post leaves more questions than answers, but it’s the place I find myself in now, contemplating the spiritual. Please chime in with your thoughts.
Blessings
Epic Theology 
January 3, 2014 at 12:24 PM
My wife would have the same thing, although I never knew what it was called. I assume then, that you have had plenty of spiritual dreams where you have seen or interacted with a spiritual being, either angel or demon? My wife has those often, some are terrifying while others are inspiring and incredibly calming. As a biology guy, I am constantly reminded of the wondrous handiwork of our Creator. In fact, that is one primary reason I went into biology in the first place. God’s fingerprints are everywhere, and it is fascinating to find them!
Here’s my assessment to society’s loss of the sensus divinitatis. The high-flying, traffic-jamming, financial-crisis, Wall-Street-minute, work-six-days-a-week, own-three-cars, boxing-week-sale-for-five-months, gotta-have-everything, money-money-money culture we have created in North America (and the Western world for that matter) has forced us to switch from sensus divinitatis” to a “sensus bankaccountatis”. We are always aware of where our money is, where it is going, and what it is doing to us. Maybe our “sensus” hasn’t changed, but the prevailing god has?
Funny how the god of this culture is fleeting, constantly diminishing, the cause of wars, divorce, addiction, and unhappiness, can’t buy love, and only serves to corrupt those who possess it. To me, the prevailing god of this culture is no different than a virus. Infect slowly, corrupting just enough to harm the host but not fatally, so as to prolong corruption for as long as possible, then, kill it off just after it finds a new host to repeat the process.
As for the parable of the blind man and colourful art, I have a friend who lost his sense of smell due to a childhood accident. The description of the idea of smell to him (be the exquisite sweet warm smell of freshly baked apple pie, or the fresh relaxing smell of a spring rain, to the undeniable, breathtaking smell of a million pine trees blanketing a mountainside) is impossible.
How can we pull that veil from the eyes of those around us to bring back the divine awareness?
Thanks for your insight Brandon!
January 3, 2014 at 5:42 PM
*clap clap clap* Thanks Jared! Your assessment of society’s “god” strikes a deep chord. Much to chew on and think about. I believe it is the job of artists and politicians and other culture-makers to show how shallow the pursuit of money really is. However, due to the very nature of the battle, we don’t have the resources that those who profit from consumerism have at their disposal. But, we fight on anyways! Once again, always glad to have you in the conversation, Jared!
March 10, 2014 at 11:14 AM
Thanks for your post. You’ve spurred my thinking on this.
I think that much of our perspective on life is mostly culturally (and possibly genetically) ingrained, and partially our own choosing. That is, for example, even though i don’t want money to be my god, and i take steps to reduce its power in my life, still i become stressed when I sense my savings getting low and I react in an unhelpful manner to those around me. Maybe not the best example, but i hope you get the point.
I only have so much control over my ‘gut reactions’ to things that happen to and around me. Over time, if I develop good habits, I can shape my instincts and reactions – but it takes a huge amount of commitment. It’s an uphill battle.
How does all this relate to sensus divinitatis? Since the 1800s, our culture has become increasingly skeptical about the immaterial and more and more reliant on material existence. This includes reliance on money, physical pleasure and stimulus, focus on ‘the earth’. Some of this has been a wonderful antidote to metaphysical extremism and its resulting de-emphasizing of material existence and its goodness. But the pendulum has swung too far.
Now, for someone to be ‘spiritual’ means that there is something in the world that we don’t understand – Xmen and mutant powers, psychic abilities, mysteries that with the right equipment could be explained by science (see metachlorians in Star Wars), or a general sense of being mysteriously ‘connected’ to others or ‘the world’.
The thought of a spiritual being apart from nature is too big a step for someone born into this culture.
But we do have choice, even thought it is small in comparison with the weight of culture. It would take a conscious choice to see things differently, and by faith choose to see things differently over and over and over – and maybe – with commitment and consistency, we will day see things differently.
Go to Africa – totally different culture – and they see God everywhere.
Does God withdraw from those who focus on the material or do we withdraw from Him by not focusing on him?