Back to School

Note: This piece was originally written for UAF course ENG213X, “Academic Writing on the Social and Natural Sciences,” in October of 2001. It is posted here as part of an assignment for AIO course SS100, “Strategies for Online Learning.”

What color is hatred? Does depression have a scent? When faced with such questions, we become faced with the dilemma of trying to prove aspects of one realm with observations of another. Similarly, we cannot “prove” by conventional methods that God exists, or that the Bible is true and is His written word. The inability to prove these and other questions of this kind arises from the nature of human knowledge: we must know everything with our minds, and nothing else is accepted as knowledge. Proof to answer a question of God’s existence cannot necessarily be obtained solely through logical, procedural and scientific thinking with the mind, especially if the inquirer is predisposed to find evidence either against the proof, or at least not contributory to it. It is rather knowledge of the heart that “proves” these questions, and proves them to our souls and spirits, not our minds. When one truly knows God, he obviously does not doubt His existence. He “knows” in his soul, however, and not necessarily with his mind. One does not call his best friend on the phone and ask, “Do you exist?” because one knows it to be true.

As Americans, we have spent, in most cases, at least a decade in a school of some form or another. Through this teaching, we are taught the scientific method and to utilize it when considering any information. While indeed useful, it can only be applied to those things that may be perceived by the five natural senses, and not every case even then. I will call these the body senses. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 reveals to us that there are, though, two other areas of our beings. We also have “senses” in these facets of ourselves. The first is the soul, and second is the spirit.

Body senses are those things that you can touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. They are things that can be perceived with the body. With my sense of taste, I may learn that an apple is fresh and sweet; with my sense of touch, I may learn that a skillet is hot. What one sense perceives, another may verify. Biting into the apple, I would likely hear a crisp snapping sound, telling me the apple was fresh. Touching the skillet, I would learn that skillet was hot by the sizzling sound it made, the smell of my burning flesh, and the pain perceived by my sense of touch. The body senses detect physical things around us, and send the information to our brains to be processed. The process never leaves the physical realm. This is perhaps the only sure place that the scientific method and its theories are valid, and not in every case even here.

Soul senses differ from body senses in that they never enter the physical realm. The soul itself consists of the mind, will, and emotions. Do not confuse mind with brain, for the two are separate. The mind does not involve itself with the physical world or its activities. It does not control motor skills, tell whether a food is sweet or bitter, nor tell your hand whether the pan is hot. It is the intellectual aspect of our beings, and is not involved with the physical realm. The will is the mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action. An emotion is, as defined in the American Heritage Dictionary, “an intense mental state that arises subjectively rather than through conscious effort….” Hatred and depression, which we have already looked at, fall into the category of emotions. Because they are emotions, they are also part of the soul. We cannot taste, touch, smell, hear, or see emotions, but there is no person who has not felt their effects.

The soul does, however, have a set of senses all its own. Often, the corresponding body senses trigger the soul senses; physical senses often serve as a medium to convey information to the senses of the soul. For instance, when we see images of starving children in Africa on television, our body senses perceive nothing more than colorful images dancing before us on a glass screen, but none can deny that those depictions of poverty and suffering do not stir some feeling. Our bodily eyes in this case convey images to the “eyes” of our souls, generating feelings of sympathy, compassion, and pity for the children. Another example might be when a friend calls on the phone and, crying, explains to you some difficult situation that she has just been through. Your physical ears hear nothing more than sound waves. Your brain can perhaps recognize that, although the person on the other end is indeed your friend to whose voice you are accustomed to hearing, the frequency of the sound waves apparent in your friend’s voice is abnormal. This is the extent of body senses in this scenario. The ears are the sole sense being used here, but it is the “ears” of the soul that allow you to sympathize with the person on the other end of the line.

The spirit senses are perhaps the most difficult to both explain and perceive. They exist outside of both the natural and emotional territory. They are not of anything seen, heard, or recognized with any natural senses. The spirit grows through intimate, personal fellowship with God. When that spirit grows, it is better able to sense the things of the same realm that are working both for and against it. In his book The Philosophy of Worship, Dr. Judson Cornwall relates an event of just such a sense. He had just arrived home from a conference several states away, and, walking toward his wife in the airport terminal, he spotted a man coming toward him. Though neither man had ever seen the other, their spirits recognized the other. Just as though they were old friends, the two dropped their luggage and greeted each other with a friendly hug and a knowing smile, then picked up their bags and continued on in their way. The spirit in each man recognized the spirit in the other, and it transferred into physical knowledge that caused each to joyously greet the other.

This, however, was certainly not the first case of such a meeting. Luke 1 tells the story of when Mary learned of her impregnation by the Holy Spirit. She “went in a hurry” to Judah, where her cousin Elizabeth lived. Elizabeth, too, was with child, and “[w]hen Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in [Elizabeth’s] womb…” (vv.41). A few verses later, Elizabeth said to Mary, “For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy.” Many Bible scholars think that John, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb, was at that instant filled with the Holy Spirit. It was not the mere sound of Mary’s voice that caused the baby to leap, but the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, we can see that this was not a sense perceived by either the body or soul senses, but by the spirit senses. The knowledge gained by that spirit sense translated into the soul in the emotion of joy.

Conversely, one with the Spirit of God living in him can feel heaviness in the air when an evil spirit is near, often in the form of a demon-possessed person. His spirit knows that something is not right with that person, and it translates into uneasiness in every encounter with that possessed person. It cannot be proved scientifically-to the body-that this person has a demon inhabiting his soul, but it is undeniably true to the spirit.

Body sees body; soul sees soul; spirit sees spirit. The knowledge gained from soul and spirit senses cannot be proved to the five body senses because the two are not of the same realm. It is similar to asking the color of hatred, or the scent of depression. Chris Rice realized this insufficiency of our comprehension. A few lines from a song he wrote, entitled Smell the Color Nine, capture this essence beautifully: “…my heart of faith keeps poundin’, so I know I’m doin’ fine, but sometimes finding You is just like trying to smell the color nine.” In these lyrics, the songwriter is talking to God and explaining his frustration at not always being able to see God or know His will. King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived (1 Kings 4:29-31), said in Ecclesiastes 11:5, “Just as you do not know the path of the wind, or how the bones form in the womb of a pregnant woman; so you do not know the work of God…” It is because we often look and listen for God with our natural senses that we do not find Him. We cannot sense with our body or even our souls what is of the spiritual realm. In a sense, it “is just like trying to smell the color nine”.

We are perhaps incompetent to encompass with our natural intelligence the ideas and concepts that our souls and spirits easily understand due to the fact that our brains are part of our body and, therefore, will never be able to comprehend other realms. Instead, we must take, on faith, the word of our Lord, Who knows and sees all. Due to this inability to comprehend with our brain and scientifically analyze these “senses” of the soul and spirit, we generally try to relate ideas and beliefs in these two realms to the natural, or body, to make them easier to understand and comprehend. The brain cannot understand knowledge of the soul and spirit, but can understand the parallel of that information in the natural.

Songwriters so often pick up on these qualities of human nature; another lyricist, Paul Baloche, of Sonic Flood, calls to God in Open the Eyes of My Heart. The lyrics “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord… I want to see you” establish that we most easily identify with those senses with which we are familiar in the natural, then apply them to the spiritual to better understand spiritual concepts. It also shows that we cannot of our own accord “see” the spiritual, but that we must ask God to show us-to open the eyes of our hearts.

The senses of the soul and spirit are far from comprehensible to the natural, body senses. To give an idea of this concept, simply try to envision another physical sense. John Locke, an English philosopher of the 17th century, had thoughts along these lines:

…though we cannot believe it impossible to God to make a creature with other organs, and more ways to convey into the understanding the notice of corporeal things than those five, as they are usually counted, which he has given to man- yet I think it is not possible for any man to imagine any other qualities in bodies, howsoever constituted, whereby they can be taken notice of, besides sounds, tastes, smells, visible and tangible qualities. And had mankind been made but with four senses, the qualities then which are the objects of the fifth sense had been as far from our notice, imagination, and conception, as now any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or eighth sense can possibly be…

The senses that we know in the natural are limited to only five-taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight. Who is to say, however, that we do not similarly have five or more in the soul and spirit. Surely, there are times when we “know” something to be true despite the odds and physical knowledge. Policeman and detectives call it a “hunch”. A “hunch” will certainly not stand as proof in a court of law because it is not knowledge scientifically acquired by the five natural senses. We should not be so quick to discard information from the senses of the soul and spirit. Eternally speaking, they are the only truth.

Works cited

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition. CD-ROM. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992.
• Rice, Chris. Smell the Color Nine.
• Bible. Ryrie Study Bible, expanded edition. New American Standard translation. Chicago: Moody Press, 1995.
• Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/locke/Essay.htm.
• Cornwall, Dr. Judson. The Philosophy of Worship. Columbus: Christian Life Publications, 1998.