You have limited time to dedicate to the search of truth. What do you focus on?
Imagine for a moment that you had a treasure map in front of you. The map leads you to a trove worth untold millions. The only trouble is, someone decided to glue a sheet of postage stamps to the face of the map. Since the map is old and quite fragile, the cost to have a document expert remove each stamp is prohibitively expensive.
Since you have a limited amount of money, you have to choose very carefully which postage stamps to remove. You could all at once randomly select as many stamps as you could afford to remove and then see what you can interpolate about the still hidden parts of the map. But what happens if you randomly select the area of the map that is blank, or some part of the path that you probably could have guessed given the rest of the path? Clearly, a wiser approach would be to take off one square at a time, and hope that each new square gives you enough information to make a more informed choice about which stamp to remove next. This technique is used in real world situations, and is called active learning.
Learning truth is a lot like active learning. Suppose that the document represents all truth. The stamps are the veil of ignorance. The process of removing the veil comes through revelation, which has an exceedingly high cost of praying, knocking, asking, searching, studying, and obedience through sacrifice.
Revelation is a sublime process. In a flash, God can show you something as short and simple as where you left your car keys, or something as grand and complete as the vision of the entire history and future of the world. Revelation almost always comes, however, line upon line or piece by piece. These packets of information light up a small section of your understanding of the map. Like any sort of lantern, the light is brightest at its center, but radiates in decreasing intensity in all directions. When truth is revealed via revelation, it always casts light on surrounding or connected themes.
All revelation is not equal in the amount of light contained therein. The light is of varying brightness. A vision of heaven would bring with it much more certainty than an impression of feelings. A voice heard in answer to a direct question would be clearer than a vague feeling in response to the same.
A disciple’s understanding of truth is like a satellite picture of a town at night. There would be various sources of light of various intensities in various locations, piercing the otherwise uniform darkness. Those lights would combine and overlap in some locations, and other locations would remain completely dark. A disciple must always search for more light and truth. However, God grants both in his own time and way, even when we are living according to that which we already possess. This means that disciples must operate on an incomplete picture. This is where active learning comes in.
We must all choose what to ask the Lord; what knowledge to invest the most time in seeking. For instance, we know that we can receive spiritual gifts if we seek them. However, all spiritual gifts are not of equal worth. Our specific situations can add to the significance of some gifts and take away from the significance of others. Knowledge is the same. We have a finite amount of time and effort to exert in learning God’s mysteries.
More important than prioritization is understanding the need to interpolate. Since the reception of light and truth is an ongoing process, we all find ourselves in situations where we do not have a revealed direction, despite living worthily and asking God fervently. This is the purpose of interpolation. We look at our nighttime satellite image and we try our best to guess what lurks in the shadows, based on what we can see in the city lights. Undoubtedly, we will sometimes make mistakes. Sometimes we are quite thrown when someone, especially someone in authority, says something or acts in a way that we know is contrary to what has been revealed to us. We ought to make more allowance for such, realizing that mistakes are, in fact, quite a necessary part of the gospel. Also, that mistakes, per se, may not be mistakes at all, but simply lower resolution truth.
Viewing our understanding of truth as an active learning problem helps us have pity on ourselves and others when beliefs are declared which, in hindsight, were not as wise or heaven-sent as previously thought. Such can be written off as a side effect of doctrinal interpolation or lack of resolution. In either case, such is not an evidence of lack of revelation, but simply a natural consequence of the process of obtaining it. Likewise, this view of truth helps those called to positions of spiritual stewardship to be reticent and careful in claiming new revelation. Revelation is sacred, and not to be inferred when someone’s own best wisdom is the source of a declaration. If the Lord declared not to teach without the Spirit, what would he say about claiming something is revelation without the Spirit? Such caution will prevent a host of problems including the disaffection of the believing when they learn that what they were told was revelation is false, or, worse yet, was obtained through earthly and not heavenly means.