Our Faith is full of sensory experiences. Christianity is lived through our mortal bodies. The Bible shows us how our senses are gifts from God connecting us in this embodied world. By paying more attention to our senses we can deepen prayer, worship and Christian living.
The inspiration to write a book about knowing God through our physical senses came as a Damascus moment. I was a neuroscientist and educator by day and a parish and diocesan catechist in my ‘free time’. I kept both activities separate as mentioning God in my scientific work at secular institutions would not have gone down well. Equally, talking about neuroscience in children’s catechism wouldn’t seem right.
After a particularly busy period, I decided to escape both neuroscience and catechism and went on private retreat to a monastery. My plan was no reading or writing, no doing – only being and surrendering to the routine of the monastery. Little did I realise, it was Plan B. Plan A was awaiting me from the Holy Spirit. The phrase God of Our Senses sprang into my mind and with it, the idea that our physical, bodily senses are gateways to our spiritual senses and it is through both that we know God, His works and His mission for us.
The prospect of bringing together two passions of mine, science and religion, was exciting. After borrowing a pen, asking for paper and access to the monastery’s library, I excitedly researched and wrote extensive notes for the book. However, when I returned to normal life, all the usual pressures re-entered the vacuum left by my mini-retreat. That was well over 30 years ago and the project remained fallow until I retired. My original notes were outdated so I rewrote everything but held to the title despite many suggestions to change it.
The underlying principle of God of Our Senses is that our Faith is full of sensory experiences. Christianity is lived through our mortal bodies: eyes that see, ears that hear, hands that touch, mouths that taste and noses that smell. Our senses are gifts used by God to connect with us in this embodied world. By paying more attention to our senses we can deepen prayer, worship and daily Christian living.
The book’s purpose is far‑reaching: to help us recognise that God’s presence is not confined to explicitly “religious” moments but can be discerned through the ordinary sensations of life – light and sight, sound and hearing, taste and hunger, touch, movement and stillness. It invites us to see our bodies as God‑given instruments sensitive and open to encounter.
“Know your audience” is the guiding principle for authors and presenters. When writing a scientific research paper or presenting at a medical conference, I knew the community it was intended for and how the paper needed to be written; objectively, evidenced statements, impersonal and factual. When writing religious books and programmes, I adhered to Catholic doctrine and tradition and if aimed at children and catechists, it needed to be practical and engaging.
Attempting to combine science with religion, the mantra “knowing your audience” gets muffled. Technology dominates our modern life and the quantity and quality of our lives have been significantly improved by medical science, yet only a tiny proportion of the population identifies or works as scientists. Many people consider science beyond their grasp and interest. Yet science is part of God’s wonderful Creation. So, when creating a new genre, I use another mantra, “if you build it, they will come”.
The concept of the senses and spirituality is not new. Perhaps the best-known exponent was St Ignatius of Loyola who created a prayer technique called application of the senses. When reading a piece of Scripture, you “imagine” it through your senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste as if you were there, making the events come alive.
Building on St Ignatius and others, God of Our Senses offers a different perspective, that of a neuroscientist relating the science behind the senses to spirituality and aimed at a general audience. At the time of St Ignatius and indeed the people of the Bible, little was known about the science of the physical senses and what was known was erroneous. Nowadays, an enormous amount is known by specialists but not by the general population. How, for instance, the eye captures and processes light and how the brain processes electrical impulses and indeed what is the nature of light are areas we as scientists know much more about than any civilisation previously.
But why is this knowledge important for Christians? There are numerous reasons. Our senses are underappreciated. When they work, they are totally ignored until we develop a problem; blurry eyesight, loss of taste or smell, deafness etc. We should give praise for our senses and understand why they don’t work at times. Knowing how the senses work at a microscopic and sub-cellular level might be beyond most people’s understanding yet it’s all part of God’s creation. God is in the detail. Scientists should make their specialised knowledge accessible to all. Knowing how the senses work evokes wonder and awe at both the science and the One who produced the science.
In combining Scripture with insights from neuroscience, God of Our Senses offers an accessible guide to integrating faith with a heightened appreciation of the senses. The Bible is full of sensory language. For instance, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). Taste is a highly intimate sense. It’s highly personal as we have individual taste preferences. We can only taste something when it’s in the mouth. Taste is a gateway sensation. Food that is tasty is swallowed, enters the body and eventually becomes part of us. Anything distasteful is rejected. In the quotation, taste is used as a metaphor but one that is easily understood as we all have a concept of taste. An entire thesis could be written on this one verse alone.
As you read through the Bible and if your antennae are raised to detect references to the senses, you will find one reference after another. Hearing the “still small voice” or “gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:12), walking in the light rather than the darkness (John 8:12), “So, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17), and countless others for each of our five main senses. These are not just poetic images; they show that our senses are involved whenever God draws us into relationship with Him.
Sight is a prominent sense in the Gospels. Jesus often uses images of light, darkness and blindness; Bartimaeus’ healing in Mark 10 is both physical and spiritual. He “sees” or senses who Jesus is and follows Him on the way. Our eyes receive light, but our brains interpret it – we concentrate, select and focus. A recurring theme in God of Our Senses is that sight, like the other sensations, is a construct of the brain. We may all look at the same scene, but the brain produces different perceptions for each of us depending on our attention. Learning to “see” God at work is not only devotional, but also a training of attention: a choice about what we notice and how we interpret events in our lives.
Hearing is equally central to us and is the first sense the book explores. “Faith comes from hearing” (Romans 10:17), was a quote used earlier yet many of us struggle to distinguish God’s voice from the noise of daily life. Our auditory system filters background sounds so we can attend to what is most important. We know this in everyday terms – the way we can pick out our name in a crowded room. Scripture invites us to cultivate the same selective listening for God’s Word: creating spaces of silence, resisting distraction, and rediscovering the joy of listening attentively.
Smell and taste appear more subtly. The “pleasing aroma” of sacrifice (Genesis 8:21), the “fragrance” of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15), and the language of feasting and banquets all point to a God who delights in nourishing His people. Smell is closely linked to memory and emotion; a familiar scent can transport us in an instant. When Scripture speaks of the “aroma” of Christ-like love, it points to a way of living that leaves a lasting impression – a sensory metaphor for a spiritual reality.
Touch and movement are fundamental in Jesus’ ministry. He reaches out to touch and be touched: by the sick, by children, by the woman who believes that touching his garment will bring healing (Mark 5:25–34). Our nervous system constantly reports contact, pressure, warmth and cold, giving us a sense of being held in the world. God of Our Senses invites us to see this not just as biology, but as sign and reminder of the God who “holds all things together” (Colossians 1:17), meeting us through human touch, solidarity and service.
In our second article, we’ll look at the physical sense of hearing and how our physical senses link with our spiritual senses. And we’ll explore some more fascinating facts.
