In Edwin Abbott’s fascinating 1864 novella Flatland, characters are all shapes. A sphere from a three-dimensional world called Spaceland descends to the two-dimensional world of Flatland. In Flatland, the world consists of lines and flat shapes. So, for example, if a triangle turns to the side, the other inhabitants of Flatland see it as a line.

You can imagine the donnybrook in the two-dimensional realm of Flatland when the enigmatic Sphere shows up on the scene, a being from the third dimension! The folks of Flatland are a straightforward bunch, living in a world of length and width, with nary a notion of height or depth. To them, the world is a flat canvas.

So, 'up' and 'down' are foreign concepts in this pancake universe; they're as alien as the idea of a square circle or a good driver from Ohio. So, when Mr. Sphere pays a visit, cruising through their flat existence, he looks like a strange circle that magically expands and contracts. The Flatlanders lose their minds. They can't fathom his true spherical glory. He's a mystery. He looks like a circle to their eyes. But inexplicably, he changes in size as he travels through their world. It produces a giant brain cramp for the two-dimensional denizens.

The hero of the story is a Flatlander named “The Square.” At first, like all the rest of the inhabitants of his world, the Square can only experience the Sphere with a mind his world has formed to see two dimensions. But the Sphere offers him the chance of a lifetime: he takes the Square to Spaceland.

Pulled out of his flat existence, Square gets a cosmic noogie from the mysterious Sphere. Picture it: Square's cruising along in his two-D life, and then — Bam! — he's hoisted into the dizzying realm of Spaceland. It's like he's been near-sighted and squinty his whole life, and someone just slapped a pair of 3D glasses on his face. Suddenly, there's this whole 'height' thing he's never even dreamed of. He sees things—real, solid, 3D things—including Mr. Sphere, the tour guide. It's like he's been watching life on a crummy motel TV with rabbit ears and Bakelite dials and suddenly gets a glimpse of reality in 8K.

From up there, Flatland is just a sheet of paper, and its people are scurrying around like ants who've lost their picnic. It's a real epiphany for Square. He gets it now: there's more out there than his flat world. But, oh, the price of seeing beyond the veil!

When he gets dropped back into Flatland and starts flapping his gums about 3D, they treat him like he's got an elbow growing out of his forehead. His grand ideas earn him nothing but cold stares and a one-way ticket to the joint. It's a real gut punch, showing just how tough it is to drop truth bombs on folks who aren't ready to hear them.

Seeing stuff other people can’t see can get you in hot water with the big shots who run the world.

Did that ever happen to you? I don’t mean being mistaken for the bass player in a garage band, or thinking there’s no difference between Coke and Pepsi, or finding out that the “America” some people want to make “great again” was a world where the folks who look like me ran everything and everybody else was forced to readjust their lives every time someone like me walked into the room.

I mean, you picture the world one way, and it turns out different—and not just like an adjustably small amount of different … but big, 180-degree, totally-opposite-of-what-you-were-thinking different?

Like everything you thought you knew turns out to be—if not completely wrong, then certainly off by more than a few clicks.

Like that perfectly fetching haircut you had in your high school yearbook was a tribute to your timeless fashion sense—a look that you figured would remain in vogue in perpetuity? And then your kids come along and tell you that you looked more like Shaggy running out of a broom closet in Scooby Doo and The Tar Monster than Fred driving the Mystery Machine with Daphne batting her eyes and hanging on his every word.

Or you’re a kid, and you go to Baskin Robbins, and they have ice cream … with bubble gum in it—and you think, “This is definitely the pinnacle of gustatory delight?” It’s got ice cream … and bubble gum? Come on. That’s like the 1992 Olympic Dream Team of food for a kid. Then you grow up, and it becomes clear that there are perhaps more sophisticated ice cream options, and you can’t figure out how you ever thought bubble gum ice cream was a plausible alternative for consumption by anything more sophisticated than a goat.

Or you grew up thinking that government service was at least nominally about “service,” and then along comes this merry band of self-dealing yahoos, and you wonder, “How could I have been so utterly mistaken?”

You were pretty sure the world worked one way, only to find out later that it worked completely differently.

And it’s not just with haircuts, ice cream, and naïve views of government either. People often have the same experience of God. They imagine God as huge … and powerful … and “out there”—enjoying long bouts of being prayed and sung to and surrounded by things like majesty and awe.

And while I suspect God is to be found in those things, I now believe there’s more.

When I go to Mexico, we usually stop at the Cathedral downtown. It was built in the sixteenth century. It’s got gold all over the place. High ceilings. Beautiful statuary. Lots of polished wood. Pretty amazing.

If I were to imagine meeting God, it would look something like that. Standing before God on judgment day, I picture lots of awe and majesty, plenty of gold and high ceilings. When I hear about “Jesus coming in his glory,” that’s the kind of thing I see in my mind. Lots of trumpets, and light, and strange-looking beasts. An enormous gilded throne befitting God’s glory.

But in this parable, Matthew has a slightly different view of what the glory of God will look like. There’s a throne in Matthew’s version—but he doesn’t make much of it, apart from calling it the “throne of his glory.”