The Five Senses and a Dark Forest

Have you ever been in a dark forest? A really dark forest? I have and I can tell you that it is a strange feeling when you wave your hand two inches in front of your eyes and cannot see anything at all. Imagine that you are in this forest and an absence of moonlight puts you in such a position where the five senses are rendered as useless and you must now find your way out. Remember the five senses? Sight, touch, hear, smell and taste.

These are the senses that science relies upon to verify the empirical validity of anything. This consortium of melded minds has become the new god of this age as the final assessment on anything. They are the magnum opus from ethics to God. If science cannot determine the empirical data necessary to come to a conclusion, then it may or may not be true. You may claim that science proposes theories of which other theories challenge or support the current data but something strange happens along the way: the theories that are given life through dialogue become fact in the day-to-day realities of life.

Now, what begins to happen when the senses are taken away? When darkness descends, another verification of sorts rises to the surface. These senses are of no use. How then do you find your way out of total darkness? Does the Way out no longer exist? Obviously, the Way is still there because we know that we arrived in the forest when light was available and our eyes could guide us appropriately. The question that still stands is, “How do you find your way out?”

Now, the unbeliever would tell me that this allegory is invalid because we knew the way into the forest, a priori, before we ever entered. It would be simple to conclude that the way is still there based on the experience of the former. If you want to go that route, that’s fine with me. But let’s say that you have been drugged and wake to find yourself in a forest of total darkness. Would your assumptions still change? I would assume not. Knowing that you are in a place that you have not been and not in a place that you have would be a strong indication.

The point is that you always assume that there is a way out but it is not until you have stood in complete darkness that you are compelled to grasp for something or anything that will help you find the Way. When my youngest child cannot hear or see either me or his mother in the same room, he bursts into a panic because he assumes that we are not there based on his lack of empirical data. Moreover, so goes the scientific community.

The trouble with science is that they are trying to use the capacity of the senses for an occasion that does not apply when looking for God. Until these faculties are shut down completely, they will continue to listen for the scent of a flower, smell for an indication of a star-filled sky or taste the flavor of the sun. God is not merely a concept or a club but a reality to encounter and if you honestly believe that you will encounter him through misapplied senses, you will always come up empty. In other countries where there is no objection to a supernatural of any flavor, they have a saying for people like this, “You think too much.” This is not a complement.

When these particular “crutches” that the scientific community leans on so severely are cast aside in favor of something else, something much more unseen, then science will find God. And if you think that I am lowering the gavel a bit too harshly on science, I might add that we do this in the church as well. How many times have we been in a dark situation and have called upon God but trusted with one of our five senses? It’s easier to follow what you can see, isn’t it? We’ve all done it and are in need of a blessed moment where all of the faculties, which we rely upon so heavily, are shut down so that we too might open up our spirit to the voice of the Holy Spirit who dwells there. It is in this unused sense of the Spirit that will guide us/them through the darkest forest.

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