Don: What effect do our senses of sight, sound, smell and touch have on faith? Scripture has many references that suggest the senses have some effect:
O taste and see that the Lord is good…. (Psalms 34:8)
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)
“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
“Turn to [other translations say “Look at”] Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth;
For I am God, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:22)
“Incline your ear and come to Me.
Listen, that you may live; (Isaiah 55:3)
“May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
For your love is better than wine.
“Your oils have a pleasing fragrance,
Your name is like purified oil;…”
Therefore the maidens love you. (Song of Solomon 1:2-3)
All Your garments are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia;
Out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made You glad.
Kings’ daughters are among Your noble ladies;
At Your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir.
Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear: (Psalms 45:8-10)
There is great appeal to all the senses in these exhortations to get closer to God. Yet Scripture also tells us that faith is comprised of things hoped for and is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), and that we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
So which is it? Is faith in some way dependent on the senses, or not? Gideon, a member of the “hall of faith” we have been discussing, had a distinctly sensory experience, which apparently he needed in order to overcome his extreme lack of faith, even in the presence of an angel. Indeed, he demanded not just one but three signs, accessible to his senses, in order to put aside his doubts about God’s presence, power, and protection:
Then the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press in order to save it from the Midianites. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.” Then Gideon said to him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” The Lord looked at him and said, “Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?” He said to Him, “O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.” But the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man.” So Gideon said to Him, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, then show me a sign that it is You who speak with me. Please do not depart from here, until I come back to You, and bring out my offering and lay it before You.” And He said, “I will remain until you return.”
Then Gideon went in and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread from an ephah of flour; he put the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, and brought them out to him under the oak and presented them. The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread and lay them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord put out the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread; and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. Then the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. When Gideon saw that he was the angel of the Lord, he said, “Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” The Lord said to him, “Peace to you, do not fear; you shall not die.” Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and named it The Lord is Peace. To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
Now on the same night the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it; and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take a second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down.” Then Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the Lord had spoken to him; and because he was too afraid of his father’s household and the men of the city to do it by day, he did it by night.
When the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was torn down, and the Asherah which was beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar which had been built. They said to one another, “Who did this thing?” And when they searched about and inquired, they said, “Gideon the son of Joash did this thing.” Then the men of the city said to Joash, “Bring out your son, that he may die, for he has torn down the altar of Baal, and indeed, he has cut down the Asherah which was beside it.” But Joash said to all who stood against him, “Will you contend for Baal, or will you deliver him? Whoever will plead for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because someone has torn down his altar.” Therefore on that day he named him Jerubbaal, that is to say, “Let Baal contend against him,” because he had torn down his altar.
Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the sons of the east assembled themselves; and they crossed over and camped in the valley of Jezreel. So the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon; and he blew a trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called together to follow him. He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, and they also were called together to follow him; and he sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came up to meet them.
Then Gideon said to God, “If You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken, behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken.” And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not let Your anger burn against me that I may speak once more; please let me make a test once more with the fleece, let it now be dry only on the fleece, and let there be dew on all the ground.” God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground. (Judges 6:11-40)
The story continues:
Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him, rose early and camped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of Moreh in the valley.
The Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has delivered me.’ Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead.’” So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained.
Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink.” Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, “I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home.” So the 300 men took the people’s provisions and their trumpets into their hands. And Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained the 300 men; and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
Now the same night it came about that the Lord said to him, “Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hands. But if you are afraid to go down, go with Purah your servant down to the camp, and you will hear what they say; and afterward your hands will be strengthened that you may go down against the camp.” So he went with Purah his servant down to the outposts of the army that was in the camp. Now the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the sons of the east were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as numerous as the sand on the seashore. When Gideon came, behold, a man was relating a dream to his friend. And he said, “Behold, I had a dream; a loaf of barley bread was tumbling into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it so that it fell, and turned it upside down so that the tent lay flat.” His friend replied, “This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has given Midian and all the camp into his hand.”
When Gideon heard the account of the dream and its interpretation, he bowed in worship. He returned to the camp of Israel and said, “Arise, for the Lord has given the camp of Midian into your hands.” He divided the 300 men into three companies, and he put trumpets and empty pitchers into the hands of all of them, with torches inside the pitchers. He said to them, “Look at me and do likewise. And behold, when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I and all who are with me blow the trumpet, then you also blow the trumpets all around the camp and say, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon.’”
So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had just posted the watch; and they blew the trumpets and smashed the pitchers that were in their hands. When the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers, they held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands for blowing, and cried, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” Each stood in his place around the camp; and all the army ran, crying out as they fled. When they blew 300 trumpets, the Lord set the sword of one against another even throughout the whole army; and the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah, as far as the edge of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath. The men of Israel were summoned from Naphtali and Asher and all Manasseh, and they pursued Midian.
Gideon sent messengers throughout all the hill country of Ephraim, saying, “Come down against Midian and take the waters before them, as far as Beth-barah and the Jordan.” So all the men of Ephraim were summoned and they took the waters as far as Beth-barah and the Jordan. They captured the two leaders of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb, and they killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb, and they killed Zeeb at the wine press of Zeeb, while they pursued Midian; and they brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon from across the Jordan. (Judges 7)
If God was the author of Gideon’s faith, why were the senses so clearly vital to it?
David: The senses appeal to emotion. Faith is a spiritual matter. It has to be, otherwise it excludes the deaf, dumb, blind, and paralyzed. How many times have people been fooled by “signs” they took to be divine? A cloud that looks like the (purported) face of Jesus, for example. Blood apparently oozing from the eyes of a painted Madonna. Who knows that Gideon was not similarly deceived? If the senses are required, then the question is how many? How often? In Gideon’s case they were several and often; in others, a single sign sufficed.
A subtle but significant difference in the various translations of the mustard seed remark (Matthew 17:20) is that while most are in the first conditional tense (“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible for you”), three are in the third conditional tense (“If you had faith as small as a mustard seed, nothing would be impossible for you.”) (The three are the New Living Translation, the Aramaic Bible in Plain English, and GOD’S WORD® Translation. I have not personally translated the scripture, of course, but my intuition tells me that these three have got it right. If so, I interpret Jesus as saying “You do not now nor will you ever have faith the size of a even a mustard seed.”
In contrast to the trivial signs that gave Gideon faith, Peter was given the greatest sign of all: Jesus walking on water, yet he could not muster faith enough to float, and had to be saved.
To me, faith must be purely a matter of the spirit, not of the senses. It is true that a sense of spirituality can be invoked by the senses, as stimulated by (for example) the architecture and ornament of a grand cathedral, or the sound of Gregorian or Russian Orthodox chant. Music, it has been pointed out, is a device to inflate the soul. One may have a sense of God’s presence in such sensory-laden surroundings, but how real is it? Do people with no cathedral and no good music (like at least one Christian denomination I could name! 😉 ) have less hope of faith than those who do? I don’t think so.
Jay: God is the author and finisher of our faith, but (perhaps as a by-product of our fallen nature) we ourselves do have some influence over it and will use our senses for that purpose. But we have no influence over grace. God gives us what we need, period. Faith and grace are not equal and not interchangeable. We are called to be faithful and to doubt not, but there has to be something more, and perhaps it is to be found in the stories—and especially in the actions—of the people in the hall of faith, including Gideon, who acted against a vast army with a mere 300 men.
Chris: Faith is a part of God, but we have to process it through our senses. In the garden, Eve’s senses told her the fruit looked good to eat, so she took a bite. We are naturally wired to process things through our senses, and God knows that. He knows that we cannot touch, feel, smell or see the faith He knows, so He helps us approach it through our senses. Gideon knew that his demand for sensory signs might upset the divine power (“Please don’t get mad, but would you just show me… etc.”) God surely understands that we have to depend on our senses.
Jay: I would propose that the pinnacle of human faith is when the senses are not involved, and I would point to the three Hebrew worthies as my exemplar. The growing heat in the furnace did not affect their faith one bit. Their faith reflected the essence of things unseen, the substance of things hoped for. This amounted to a mustard seed of faith. If we had a mustard seed of faith, as Jesus seemed to say we do not, then it would not be the result of sensory stimulation.
Reinhardt: God’s people have different levels of conviction about what God can do. For Moses, a stick that turned into a snake was enough to convince him. Gideon needed more than that before he was convinced. External signs strengthen our faith. The disciples grew in faith through experiencing Jesus over time.
Anonymous: Gideon was never really without faith. He believed in God’s promises and in what God had done for the Israelites. This was his mustard seed. God worked with him, through his senses, to give him as much as he needed to grow it to the point where his doubts were dispelled and he felt safe in taking action against overwhelming odds. In the first half of the story, we see his doubt growing; in the second, we see his faith growing.
Owen: I’ve been taught that faith means “believing without a doubt,” and this is what Jesus meant when he talked about the mustard seed. The problem is that it is impossible for us not to doubt. We cannot look at a pencil on the table and will it to move, because however much we try to apply faith to the effort, doubt is ever-present, and that means we can never move a pencil, never mind a mountain. It’s not so much that we can’t grow our faith—it’s more that we can’t eliminate our doubt.
Donald: If we could see, hear, and touch God, perhaps we would not need faith—He would be evident. But I cannot imagine a spiritual journey without faith. Our senses confirm what we think we know. I cannot comprehend a level of spirituality so confident that it does not need faith, that it lacks any vestige of doubt. There may be some value in the sensory experience of the grand cathedral, but I doubt it can take us to that spiritual level.
Jay: Is “value” selfish? Is to make us feel better? Often we are tricked, and need to be wary of apparent “value.”
Donald: We sing that we stand on holy ground. We cry in our rapture. We sense that holy moment when we stand closer to God.
Owen: God knows that we cannot attain the ideal and that we need to boost and verify our faith through the senses.
Michael: In this age, we distrust the senses and tend to prefer the intellect. I don’t think faith can be reached through the senses, and in the Gideon story even God seemed leery of it, but He went along with it and in the end, it seemed to work for Gideon. It is notable that God did not do this with every doubting Thomas in Scripture.
Don: God’s patience in Gideon’s case does seem remarkable.
David: There are better Scriptural examples of faith, that are not at all like Gideon’s. Job in particular: His encounter with God was spiritual; Gideon’s was physical (sensory). Gideon’s new-found faith was clearly ephemeral and probably false—it was probably just luck that won him the battle; Job’s enlightened faith was clearly life-long and required no brassy action. Like the faith of the Hebrew worthies, it passively accepted the will of God.
Jay: Yet the author of the “hall of faith” Scripture chose the odd examples of Gideon and others as exemplars, not Job or the Hebrew worthies. There has to be a reason for that. The faith of Job and the worthies seems easy to understand, while that of the hall of faith-ers seems difficult to understand.
Chris: Gideon’s faith was apparently just as good as that of the Hebrew worthies. God’s will was done in both cases. I find it encouraging that both those of little faith (like Gideon) and those of great faith (like the worthies) can succeed in doing God’s will.
David: The outcomes were quite different. Gideon could have lost the battle, in which case God’s will would not have been done and Gideon’s faith would have proved worthless. Whether or not the worthies lost their lives, their faith that God’s will would be done would have been vindicated either way. To me, that is true faith.
Donald: Does prayer help us to know God’s will?
David: I think personal prayer, which Jesus advocated be conducted in private, in a closet, can help spiritual life and help lead to a spiritual encounter with God. Job had such an encounter with God. He had a conversation with God in his mind. I’m happy to call that prayer.
Michael: Maybe the worthies just had blind belief, not faith.
Chris: Evidence of things unseen?
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