There was a time when I felt that the ideal Christian life could best be lived as a brain in a vat of nutrients. This would allow me to escape those pesky senses that arouse the passions and desires that often threaten to disturb my spiritual peace and halt my spiritual progress. A disembodied brain floating in a vat would create my own personal sensory deprivation tank. I would no longer be subject to the whims and fancies brought on by sensory overload. Instead, I could remain completely rational and logical in all situations (at least, in as many situations that a floating brain in a jar can get in!). My embodiment would have no bearing on my decisions. The complete eradication of my senses would lead to perfect peace – to spiritual equilibrium.

The problem with this perspective was plain for anyone with a modicum of sense: This way of living did not look like Jesus at all! Jesus’ way of living was incarnational, concrete, and embodied. Jesus was in love with life. He rejoiced in God’s creation, savoring seeds, trees, rain, clouds, rocks, fields, mountains, water, fire, and wind. He delighted in the simple acts of common life. He told stories of farmers, fishermen, bankers, mothers, fathers, servants, kings, and commoners. He enjoyed life with such passion that respectable people called him a drunkard and a glutton (see Matthew 11:19). Obviously, Jesus was fully alive! His spirituality could not possible be reduced to a disembodied brain in a vat of nutrients.

If Jesus’ way of living was so vibrant, how did I come to possess such an anemic spirituality? I believe it was because of two reasons: (1) a distorted view of what it means to be created in the image of God, and (2) a reduced view of the gospel. In short, I was confused about who I was and what story I embraced.

Until recently, most contemporary theologians taught that the image of God was primarily about what separated humans from animals. Thus, many defined the image of God as primarily reflected in the human intellect, reason, and rationality. (It is not surprising that Enlightenment theology emphasized reason as the primary aspect of bearing God’s image.)

Recently, however, the image of God has taken on a more relational emphasis. God is love, a community of persons in intimate relationship. We reflect God’s image as personal beings made for loving relationships. Thus, the image of God can no longer be simply reduced to rationality. Sharing God’s image involves much more than being a disembodied brain – no matter how rational and logical.

A reduced view of the Christian story also contributed to my brain-in-a-vat spirituality. This reduced view is quite common in evangelical circles. The movements of the story advance from (1) Original Sin to (2) Crucifixion to (3) Heaven. The story begins with an emphasis on the world’s fallenness and our own inherent sinfulness. God responds to our sinful condition by taking on flesh in Jesus in order to die for us so that we can go to heaven when we die.

What’s missing from this story? This story completely leaves out the goodness of creation, including our human nature that expresses itself in embodied existence. In this story, our goal is to escape a fallen creation and enter an ethereal heavenly realm. Embodied existence becomes a liability that must be shed in order to get our souls into heaven. The purpose of the incarnation is reduced to making it possible for God to die.

A better story – a story that encompasses the totality of biblical revelation – moves from (1) Creation to (2) Incarnation to (3) New Creation. The good news begins with God’s original blessing to the world. God creates a good world and blesses humanity. When humanity falls into sin, God continues to bless the world. It is sin that is the parasite, and not creation itself. In spite of humanity’s sin, creation remains good. God personally demonstrates this by forever uniting himself with humanity in the person of Christ. In the incarnation, God takes human nature into the life of the God, lifting our nature into the divine embrace of Father, Son, and Spirit. This redemption of humanity and creation results in a new creation. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, resurrection power has been unleashed in creation. All creation is currently in the process of being restored, renewed, and perfected. Resurrection glory is the hope of the believer and of the world!

In this expanded story, creation itself is redeemed. God refuses to abandon what he has declared good. Humanity is completely embraced. God fully identifies with us. And the glorious end is tangible, concrete, and embodied. This is a far cry from the sensory deprivation of a brain in a vat!

The spirituality that this story produces is based on original blessing rather than being fixated on original sin. This is only right, for it is not sin that is “original” but blessing! This spirituality is embodied rather than disembodied, material rather than immaterial, human rather than inhuman, sensual rather than ascetic, tangible rather than ethereal, incarnational rather than gnostic.

This accords with one of the earliest statements about the Gospel delivered by St. Irenaeus in the second century: “The glory of God is humanity fully alive.” The goal of God’s redemption and Christian spirituality is that we would be fully human – not subhuman or inhuman. This is the very reason we were created, that God incarnated, and that we are being re-created in God’s Spirit.

This is what it means to be spiritual. For, contrary to common perception, the opposite of spiritual is not material; the opposite of spiritual is dead. To be spiritual is to be alive – fully alive!

Contrary to my initial wishes, the goal of Christian spirituality is not to be a brain percolating in a boiling vat of nutrients. The goal is to be a human being fully alive – all thoughts, affections, and senses experienced as channels of the divine.

This includes our five senses. We are not only moral beings, sexual beings, and social beings; we are also sentient beings. Our senses allow us to participate in external reality. We experience the world through our senses. It is not an overstatement to suggest, as David Steindl-Rast does, that our senses make us human: “To be alienated from our senses means being alienated from what is truly human.”[1]

We must recognize that our senses can be gateways instead of obstacles to God’s Spirit. This is easier said than done. Generally speaking, we tend to be suspicious of our senses. This suspicion is evident in the way we pray. Not once in the entirety of sacred scripture do we read of anyone praying with their eyes closed and hands folded. And yet, this is the most common image we possess of prayer. Kathleen Finley suggests that this is the case because of how this prayer position isolates us from our senses. She writes,

Usually when we pray we try to shut out the outside world and focus on the interior, the spiritual, the realm that we often think of as beyond or above us – the transcendent – in order to be able to be with God. Instead, [I invite] you to be with God through the very tangible, specific objects of your everyday life, to take another look – as well as another listen, taste, touch, and smell – at what is right before you and to see God there.[2]

If God’s desire is that we live truly human lives through full participation in God’s creation, then we may embrace the belief that “every sensuous experience is at heart a spiritual one, a divine revelation.”[3] When we recognize this, we awaken to a world full of possibilities. “How much of the splendor of life is wasted on us because we plod along half-blind, half-dead, with all our senses throttled, and numbed by habituation. How much joy is lost on us. How many surprises we miss.”[4]

Over the course of this book, we will consider how to encounter God in and through all five senses. We will discover that each sense is a unique window to reality, and ultimately, to our experience of God in the world.

For now, it suffices to consider how each sense brings us closer to the object we experience.

With sight, we can see a wide horizon that spans for miles. Thus, sight demands the least intimacy. We can observe without participating. We can simply watch without any engagement on our part. Furthermore, sight, though it often appears sure (“seeing is believing”) is easily deceived. Optical illusions abound. There is often more going on than meets the eye. Our observation of one object can eclipse our ability to see another.

Sound brings us closer. We can see much further than we can hear. Sound demands that we participate more than sight. We can stare off into the distance with little personal engagement, but we cannot hear – really listen – without effort. We can observe without engagement. But we cannot do the same with sound. Sound demands that we work through the message we experience.

Smell brings us closer still. Smells can unlock experiences. They can be repulsive or alluring. Good smells provoke our appetite and stimulate our desires. Because we must breath, we cannot completely escape the smells around us.

Touch connects us more intimately than all previous senses. Through touch, we actually participate in the reality of another object. We feel it. We make contact with its surface. We establish a tangible connection. Our body noticeably reacts to an object’s texture and temperature. Our language is replete with touch metaphors precisely because we so desperately desire to connect with our world and others.

Finally, taste is the most intimate of all senses. In order to taste something, it must become part of us. As an object dissolves in our saliva, we become one with it. This sense is vital to health and wholeness. If we lose this sense, we will die. It stimulates our appetite. Without it, we lose our hunger, our passion, our health. Taste is the most intimate experiential sense. Through it, we come to know something from the inside out.

God’s revelation in Christ engages every human sense. John, representing the apostolic witness of Jesus, is adamant that the apostles have fully connected with God. He is confident that the eternal life of God has tangibly and irrevocably touched earth in Jesus. He writes,

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:1-4, emphasis mine)

In order to connect with Jesus, we must engage our most intimate and experiential sense – the sense of taste. John records Jesus as saying, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53, emphasis mine). This is language of closeness, intimacy, participation, appetite, desire, and passion.

We are called to abide in the life of Christ with all five senses – by tasting, touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing Christ. We are invited to have our senses satisfied by God in Christ. This opens the possibility that every sensual experience holds the potential to lead us to greater knowledge of God. It is this conviction that is at the basis of every chapter of this book.

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© Richard J. Vincent, 2007