God has designed us with five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. These are the inputs into our mind and body. If we never use any of these, then nothing bad can get in, but, then, nothing good will be accomplished, either. The conundrum is how to access the world without letting the world come in and harm us.
The fundamental problem is the world is a sensual world, meaning its highest priority is enticing all our senses to exceed God’s intended use.
We have sight to see the glory of God’s creation but the world wants us to go beyond that and see what God never intended us to see. Our smell and taste provide us with the joy of delicious food, but the world pushes us to exceed this, to have a Downton Abbey ten-course meal.
We can see too much, taste too much, touch too much, overloading our senses, leaving us ill, exhausted, and burdened with guilt. The problem is kind of like popping bubble wrap. The purpose of the bubbles is to cushion and protect but there’s a visceral satisfaction in exceeding the structural integrity of each bubble so it ruptures with a satisfying “pop”. It’s okay to pop bubble wrap but we shouldn’t do the same with our senses.
Like that Christian children’s song goes:
O be careful little eyes what you see
O be careful little eyes what you see
For the Father up above
is looking down in love
So, be careful little eyes what you see
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
1 Peter 1:15-16 NIV
Miika Silfverberg (MiikaS) from Vantaa, Finland [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons