“When I Consider Your Heavens”: Awe and the Right-Sized Self

David looks up at the night sky and feels small, and then astonished that God cares for him anyway. Psalm 8 does not end in insignificance. It goes on: “Yet You have made him a little lower than God” (8:5). Awe puts a man in his right place, small before God and dignified by God’s care. The book of Job uses the same tool: God answers Job’s suffering by showing him creation (Job 38–41).

Awe and the small self. Researchers define awe as the response to something vast that our current understanding can’t take in. Piff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancato, and Keltner (2015) ran five studies (N = 2,078). People who tended to feel awe were more generous in an economic game. Experiments that induced awe increased ethical decisions, generosity, and prosocial values. In one study, people who spent a minute gazing up at towering eucalyptus trees helped a stranger more and felt less entitled than those who looked at a building. Feeling small helped explain these effects. Bai and colleagues (2017) ran six more studies (N = 2,137) in both collectivist and individualistic cultures. Awe, but not other positive emotions, made people feel smaller, both in daily life and in the lab, and that small self helped explain greater engagement with others.

Awe and the self-focused brain. In an fMRI study, van Elk and colleagues (2019) showed people awe-inspiring nature videos. Activity in parts of the default mode network, the brain system involved in self-referential thought, was lower during awe than during other videos. This lines up with the paper’s Section 4 on stillness and the default mode network.

What the studies cannot tell us. Awe at a canyon is not the fear of the Lord. The research measures an emotion, and Scripture calls for worship of a Person. The imaging study is small and preliminary. The convergence is with the psalm’s movement. Looking at something vast tends to make the self smaller and turn attention outward, toward others, and for the psalmist, toward God.

Practice

Living it out

Five practices drawn from this passage. Each says how strong the research behind it is. What the labels mean.

1. 1

   Look up on purpose

   Once a week, spend ten minutes outside at night, looking at the sky, and pray Psalm 8.

   ModerateModerate that awe reduces self-focus and increases generosity (Piff et al., 2015; Bai et al., 2017). Praying the psalm is untested.
2. 2

   Take an “awe walk.”

   On a walk, deliberately notice things that are vast or intricate, such as trees, clouds, or birds.

   ModerateModerate that brief awe experiences in nature increase prosocial behavior (Piff et al., 2015).
3. 3

   Let creation answer your anxiety

   When a problem fills your whole view, go somewhere that makes you feel small.

   EarlyAwe reduced activity in self-referential brain regions in a small study (van Elk et al., 2019).
4. 4

   Read Job 38–41 aloud

   Let God’s questions put your questions in perspective.

   ObedienceObedience. Commended by Scripture. Untested.
5. 5

   Worship with awe, not just familiarity

   In corporate worship, pay attention to the size of what is being sung about.

   ObedienceObedience. Commended by Scripture (Ps. 95:6; Heb. 12:28). Awe in worship has not been studied in the sources here.

Studies cited on this page3

1. ↗ Bai, Y., Maruskin, L. A., Chen, S., Gordon, A. M., Stellar, J. E., McNeil, G. D., Peng, K., & Keltner, D. (2017). Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: Universals and cultural variations in the small self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 185–209. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000087
2. ↗ Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883–899. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000018
3. ↗ van Elk, M., Arciniegas Gomez, M. A., van der Zwaag, W., van Schie, H. T., & Sauter, D. (2019). The neural correlates of the awe experience: Reduced default mode network activity during feelings of awe. Human Brain Mapping, 40(12), 3561–3574. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24616