In Awe-Struck Wonder, a Reflection on the Day of Epiphany

I read an interesting article this morning called “The Science of Awe,” published in 2018 by the Greater Good Science Centre at UC Berkley. It surveyed some of the recent scientific literature on the human experience of “awe,” and described some of the fascinating effects such experiences can have on the human psyche. This article defined “awe” in terms of two specific characteristics: a “perceived vastness” and a “need for accommodation.” Humans experience awe, in other words, when we encounter something that we perceive to be so immense that it violates our normal understanding of the world. In order to accommodate such experiences epistemologically, we are required to “change the mental structures we use to understand the world” (p. 3). Notably, these “experiences of vastness” can be literal (like seeing the Grand Canyon), or figurative (like “being in the presence of someone with immense prestige”).

According to the research, such experiences have a measurable, positive impact on those who are “awe-struck” in this way. Experiencing awe can increase our feelings of social connectedness, expand our perception of time, improve our critical thinking, increase our positive mood, and decrease our materialistic impulses. Awe makes us kinder, humbler, and more generous. (In one study, “people who stood among awe-inspiring eucalyptus trees picked up more pens for an experimenter who had ‘accidentally’ dropped them, than did people who stared up at a not-so-awe-inspiring building” (p. 4).)

You can read the entire paper here if you want.

But here’s the fascinating thing: the research suggests that people are more likely to experience awe who are more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Awe is also closely connected with a number of positive character traits, including creativity, gratitude, and an appreciation for beauty. One study even found that the wiser you are, the more likely you are to experience awe (wisdom being defined here as an ability to learn from mistakes and an appreciation for one’s own limitations).

I call this fascinating only because in my experience, there are some expressions of Christianity that place a high value on things that actually make “experiences of awe” less likely, things like an insistence on certainty and a discomfort with ambiguity, a fear of mistakes and a suspicion of beauty. (I’m thinking here of the conservative, neo-reformed, semi-fundamentalist expressions of a particular kind of evangelicalism I’ve seen, known, and been part of in the past.) Of course, I’ve also encountered expressions of Christianity that are comfortably at home among unresolved ambiguities, that are almost fecundly creative, that lovingly cherish beauty as a window onto the divine—all the things that seem to increase our propensity for awe.

It left me wondering: could it be that some “ways of being Christian” make us more likely to stand in awe of God than others?

It’s a question worth pondering deeply and prayerfully, given the number of distinctly Christian virtues that, according to the science, regular experiences of awe promote in the human heart: kindness, generosity, joy, humility, social connectedness, and so on. 

How many church discipleship initiatives have you seen that intentionally encouraged participants to sit long and soak deeply in some of the theological ambiguities and unresolved mysteries of the faith, or nurture their creativity in some vulnerable way, or develop a deeply-rooted Christian aesthetic? And yet it could be that one of the best ways to walk the path of discipleship well is simply by developing characteristics like these, things that predispose us towards being awe-struck by God.

It’s worth pondering any time of year, but I’m thinking about it especially today, since it’s January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany, as I write this.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Christian calendar, the Feast of Epiphany is the day we commemorate the arrival of the wisemen at the star-marked spot where the baby Jesus lay, kneeling in awe to worship the newborn Messiah. 

(The word itself comes from a Greek word that means “to reveal,” and it signals the fact that the wisemen recognized that manger-cradled baby to be the Lord’s Messiah only as a result of direct divine revelation; certainly he was not revealed in this way to Herod, nor to any of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who were “in an uproar” when the wisemen showed up on their doorstep, asking where the “King of the Jews” had been born.)

Besides referring to this sacred celebration in the Christian year, however, the word “epiphany” can refer more generally to any experience where you suddenly come to understand something in a whole new way. On a philosophical level, “epiphanies” are moments of perfect clarity, where you catch an ephemeral glimpse into the essential nature and deepest meaning of a thing that up until that point had been entirely opaque to you. Epiphanies, in this philosophical sense, are experiences of profound insight that often lead us into to “awe-struck” moments, as the immense meaning of something previously unrecognized overwhelms us.

One of my favorite examples of an epiphany in this second sense of the word is that strange scene in that even stranger movie, Joe vs. the Volcano, where Joe glimpses the moon in all its splendor while he’s stranded at sea.

Of course, these two meanings of epiphany—the "arrival of the wisemen" meaning, and the “sudden moment of clarity” meaning—are probably more closely related than we could ever know. After all, when those gift-bearing Magi encountered the little Lord Jesus like that, they were coming into contact with a divinity so immense that it would have utterly overcome them with awe, if they could have glimpsed it in all its glory. And even the tiny glimpse they did receive, for all it being veiled in infant flesh and bone, still it sank them to their knees in epiphanic wonder.

If the science of awe has anything to add to our understanding of that moment, it suggests that when they did bow down in awe-struck worship like that, they were actually opening their hearts to all the good things Lord wants for his followers: wisdom, kindness, joy, community, and clearer eyes with which to see the world. And if we would join them, not only on the day of Epiphany but throughout our life of following him, we may find the same things burgeoning in us, as we stand in awe of the divinely revealed Son of God.