Revelation and Wisdom

One can’t speak of understanding of revelation and wisdom without appearing narcissistic so I dog paddle lightly in these deep waters.

The best way I can describe what it is like to receive wisdom from revelation, that can only be acquired by deep emptying of self and all preconceived notions coupled with the overwhelming desire to know what is true and therefore cannot be shared except with those who have also had the same gain, is this:

Imagine you are a savant in an average world. You have limited social skills but you understand quantum physics like a third grader knows his ABCs. You understand that most of what people see and grasp as truth is like an island that only reveals the tip of the mountain that rises up thousands of feet from the ocean floor. But just because you see it and know it is there–the greater truth that holds it all up–does not mean you can make others see. In other words, it is knowledge that cannot be taught, it has to be experienced, personally and individually and then only by permission. 

Four years ago, forewarned and fully realizing up front that it would be a burden and that what I would learn could not be unlearned or ignored, I still wanted to know, so I started asking for wisdom, which is the greater message (truth) behind “ask and ye shall receive” (having nothing whatsoever to do with prosperity and BMWs). In spite of the inevitable downside to receiving the gift of a word of knowledge, I wanted to know anyway because that’s how I am constructed. I have always just wanted to know what is true about anything and everything. True. Not sorta kinda true. Not good enough true. Not true for the moment or according to current interpretation. True. Plain ole true. Even if it’s harsh. Even if it demands I step up to something that makes me a pariah. 

What I have learned and continue to learn (once begun it does not subside just because it causes problems with social interaction) is that there is a rock solid, immoveable foundational truth at the bottom of everything we think we know and it doesn’t matter if we like it or not.

So, four plus years in, I find I was right in my instincts. Wisdom is indeed a burden because it makes me even more a stranger here in this world than I was. I am now an officially definable misfit, not just mildly out of step, and this renders me largely unable to participate in the minutia du jour that the world loves, the feel-good zeal that is steering the boat into the reef while the passengers are distracted in spiritual passion mode. Now, because of what I know, there is a dearth of common ground for me with anyone except my closest family and friends who love me in spite of myself. While it is mostly frustrating it is also painful sometimes. But, thankfully, less so as I age, spiritually and physically.

What has happened to me, in my quest to know what is true, I am now proficient at seeing through lies. It’s like having an app in my brain that I can tap and suddenly be able to see all the ugly underneath the glittering mask.  And make no mistake ugly is everywhere parading behind goodness in this dying age because this is Satan’s ground right now and his best, most successful tactic is to build a grand good-looking lie on the tiniest fleck of truth. Pretty lies are much like snowflakes, all sparkly with a speck of something less pretty at its core. And since, for the most part, people prefer their sorta kinda truths and outright illusions to God’s less glamorous foundational truth, man-made doctrines and philosophies easily fill this preference which makes them flourish and spread like a virus.

For me to even speak of this is a breach of my own first rule of silence. So I conclude with this:

Wisdom that comes from revelation is not the same as proclaiming to know the future, which I am always cynical of anyway. And because I am not special I am the perfect example of why anyone can receive revelation and wisdom. You just have to know up front, it changes everything.

The most important truth we are subject to is that salvation does not depend on knowing higher truth. Salvation comes only through admission of sin, repentance and acceptance of the grace of Jesus’s sacrifice. This is really all we have to know. A simple servant’s heart is what God requires of us. Not head knowledge or even high spiritual understanding. 

There will be plenty of time for that when He wraps up this reprobated age.

For Him,

Meema

(Ecclesiastes 1:18) For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.