BitterSweetLife

Why Can't We See Clearly?

Today I was jolted into an awareness of sensory deprivation. It’s not that my allotted five are no good. Standard issue, they’re still holding up all right. It’s just that I need more.

The Bible’s book of Revelation introduces creatures “full of eyes…with six wings,” and after the initial recoiling, this picture begins to sink in. Implications come next.

How else to describe it but an expose of our sensory limitations? A critique of our conceptual immobility? Our senses work fine, but, given the context of ultimate reality, they’re pitifully lacking. The eerie metaphor of the six-winged, many-eyed creature shatters our human archetypes (brown hair, blue eyes, no wings), and in the process suggests our perceptions may be more artificial than we realize.

I find myself wondering, Just how much do we miss? We don’t often come to grips with our total inability to see clearly, to grasp a picture of reality that's multifaceted and true. The fact is, we’re hopelessly earth-bound in our means of apprehension, or, to reverse the analogy, we’re like fish in water, conceiving of land.

Just the same, the spiritual plane is one that demands our attention. It’s as if the locale of Heaven emits a constant, low-decibel roar, falling just below the level of audibility, which nonetheless sets our ear-drums tingling. With our deficient senses, we track the signal as best we can.

In Revelation, John (the author) reveals his sensory "deficit" with each line he pens. We gain a picture of a throne room that encompasses the skies, filled with indescribable figures—and not because they are too shadowy to make out. Rather, it’s John’s powers of comprehension and expression that are on the shady side. His five senses succumb, and he responds with a helpless profusion of similes, as ultimately inadequate as they are immediately glorious.

It’s not that we lack a mysterious sixth sense, which will be conferred at a later date. No, what we need are seventh, eighth, ninth senses, ad nauseum, until we finally "see" things as they are. Or maybe the powers of apprehension we possess now are mere shadows of what they ought to be, will be, like a Cyclops (+ one eye) compared to a creature “full” of them.

One day, there will be a sensory awakening. In the meantime, it doesn't hurt to remember our limitations.

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! - 1 Corinthians 13:12, The Message