Point of View affects beliefs
A pregnant woman is thrown into a dungeon. The dungeon is circular, stretching upwards to the sky where only a small patch of sky is visible. A small slot allows food and water in. Her child is born in the dungeon and grows there.
The woman is an artist and teaches her child everything she can using her sketch pad and pencils. She draws for him the outside world and educates him about the trees, rivers, valleys, sea, mountains, prairies, canyons, and all the natural wonders of the outside world.
The grey pencil drawings are very important to the child as his only link to what lay beyond the walls; the world to which he belongs. He studies them carefully and asks many questions about the things she's drawn.
The child is in his early teens and has one more question he's never asked. "Mother, are the lines much the same out there as they are in here?" She is puzzled so he clarifies. "I'm asking if the pencil lines out there are quite the same. What about the paper?" She realized her son's concept of the world beyond relies entirely on the fact that the outside world is made of paper and pencil lines. He fully expects to see a 2-dimensional world of grey and white when he is freed.
She tells him, "Oh, no! The whole world is not at all like these drawings. It is much bigger, more colorful, very wide..." and she tries her best to explain to him the difference. His world is deeply shaken and he cannot comprehend what she is trying to explain.
You see, the crude pencil drawings are symbolic of the real thing. We understand the relationship because we are well acquainted with the reality. When one draws a triangle, we can either see it as a dunce cap or a highway stretching into the distance before us. The same shape can be adjusted mentally to represent either.
What if we are not acquainted with the world the symbol tries to explain? We assume the reality is more like the symbol than it really is. We dwell within the symbol rather than the reality we don't know. We are viewing it from below (in a baser form) rather than from above (a higher form).
Let me suggest to you that a person who is not acquainted with the change a person expereinces via a relationship of faith in the Messiah cannot accurately ascertain the truth of the matter. That person is viewing faith from below.
Therefore, the symbols we use to describe what has occured in us are indeed related, but do not by any means give the whole of the experience. Just as the drawings of the outside world make the child long to expereince it, our lives and testimonies can often make outsiders long for what we have, though they do not entirely understand. But when they do experience it, suddenly the symbolic drawings make sense. The whole picture is illuminated and punctuated by an "Oh! I see it now!" One feels silly for all the suppositions one made when faced only with the cruder drawings. It is like them, though not in the way one would imagine.
Christians face this same dilemma when meditating on the facts of heaven. We've never experienced it and are therefore viewing it from below. We do not have the complete picture. The symbols for it we're given in the Old and New Testaments are easily attacked, no doubt, but when we realize their relationship to the actual place, we'll understand so much more. We question streets of gold and gates of pearl. They will make sense one day to us, though admittedly only dimly now.
Paul says, "we see through the glass dimly now. But one day we shall see in full."
I see very clearly that my experience strongly calls out for me to share what I know. I know the difference. I know the change. I have a living breathing Person dwelling inside me -- the Holy Spirit -- that empowers me to do what I could never before. When I am walking with him, the difference is starkly apparent when compared with when I am not walking with Him. Other people notice, believers and non-believers alike. My life is changed by Jesus, the Messiah, the third person of the Trinity that is God. These mysteries make no sense from below, I readily admit.
But when one says I should not share my beliefs and experiences, I ask, "why not?"
A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
For more on this topic, see CS Lewis' essay, "The Weight of Glory" and other essays in his book by the same name.