Psychologists have slowly been coming to understand the role of wonder and awe in human flourishing. Awe has been shown to create a "small self," an experience where we feel connected to a larger whole, in tune with a reality bigger than ourselves. We are pulled out of our heads and into a relation with the world. The small self is a humble and relational self, and has been shown to promote compassion and altruism.
If the psalms are anything, they are songs about the small self in the face of wonder and awe. And as we see in Psalm 8, the grandeur and majesty of the natural world is often the source of the enchantment.
As I recount in Hunting Magic Eels, I think many Christians have moralized and politicized their faith, on both the left and right. And to be clear, emulating Jesus is what it means to be his disciple. But I think you could make a strong theological and psychological case that the genius of religious belief is wonder and awe, and how wonder and awe create the small self and promote compassion. As Abraham Joshua Heschel has argued, faith is an experience of "radical amazement." Heschel observes:
Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
There is a mystical core at the heart of the religious life, a radical amazement, that catalyzes and sustains righteous moral action in the world.
If you're looking for God, let wonder and awe be your guide.
