Warning: Long, Rambling Post Ahead. Read at your own risk.

I've never been a fan of exclusivity claims, either for my own or for other religions. I suggested this once to a friend of mine who was raised Baptist and she responded with a curt, "If you could get to God any way you wanted to, then someone should have told Jesus before He went and got himself nailed to that cross."

I had no response to that. That's not an attitude that suggests openness to other interpretations. The oft-repeated Christian message that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that none shall come to the father except through Him has an air of finality about it that's hard to overlook. Likewise, the either/or emphasis of the Gospels--the sheep and the goats, etc.--gives the impression that in order to be a Christian, other paths must be looked upon as false.

And so we have our American general referring to Allah as a "false god" and so on. We find ourselves at a very odd turning point in the history of the world in which the various religious traditions are suddenly butting heads everywhere we turn. In the past, it wasn't that difficult to champion one's own religion as Gospel because the likelihood of your running into someone who believed differently was less. All that cultural homogeneity made some things easier. We could say "one nation under God" and not worry about excluding atheists and Buddhists. We could put up busts of Moses or replicas of the Ten Commandments in our courthouses and nobody gave it a moment's notice.

Now, though, things aren't so easy. Those whose voices have been marginalized and ignored for so long are now standing up and demanding that they be included, and that the historic link between the United States and Christianity as its de facto religion be broken. It's fairly easy to practice freedom of religion when the competing religions are Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism. The doctrinal differences are the stuff of Sunday School rhetoratic, not of Holy War. When the set of beliefs is widened to include beliefs that are diametrically opposed to one another, however, the shit hits the fan.

We want to be tolerant of both Muslims and Jews in the US. Okay, so who gets the Temple in Jerusalem? Who gets Jerusalem? We want to be respectful of both Christians and atheists, but each group denounces the worldview of the other as not just faulty, but wrong. What reconciliation is possible under such circumstances?

Many of these differences boil down to worldview, and to truth claims expressed as functions of worldview. What I mean by this is that every ideology has a set of assumptions about the world and a set of claims about the world that are inherent to that worldview. In America, the primary clashing worldviews are the Christian worldview and the Modernist; in many ways mutually exclusive, these two ways of approaching the world are more deeply at odds than they ever have been.

The modernist worldview is the predominant one in American culture; it holds that reality is bounded by what is scientifically demonstrable. It heavily discounts claims based on faith and tradition. The most famous example of the modernist worldview's clash with Christianity is the evolution debate, still raging in some quarters, although major combat operations have long since ceased. Because there is ample physical evidence suggesting the evolution of species through natural selection, those holding the modernist worldview accept it as factual, despite never having witnessed a species evolve or, in many cases, even understanding the basic mechanics of natural selection. The modernist worldview places such faith in science that its conclusions are considered nearly sacrosanct. If most scientists believe p, then we assume that p is correct, regardless of whether or not we understand the reasoning that led to p's acceptance.

How many Christians accept the truth of evolution by natural selection? A lot of them? Most of them? Certainly more than a few, myself included. There are a number of approaches that modern Christians take in this concession: we read Genesis as pure mythology; we interpret the story loosely such that "seven days" can be seen as "billions of years". However we manage it, it's not uncommon to find Christians who are clearly quite comfortable with this intrusion from the scientific, modern worldview.

I believe that there is something remarkable that takes place here, and a metaphor is necessary to bring it to light. Let us imagine that existential Truth is at the center of a large, many-faceted jewel. When we close one eye, hold the jewel up to the light and peer into it, by necessity we are only able to see the center through a single facet. The play of light through the face of the gemstone refracts the light such that it's not possible to make indisputable statements about what the center looks like, or where it is, precisely. Some facets appear to show the center more clearly than others. If we are not free to move in relation to this gem, then the facets that are within our range of vision are the only ones that matter to us. The sum of facets that we can see is our worldview. By great effort it's possible to change our position, but in doing so, we lose our previous position. Because we are temporal, physical creatures, it can never be any other way for us. We only have two eyes and we can only be in one place at any given time.

Imagine then, that different groups of people are standing in a huge circle around the Jewel of Truth. One group is Israel; standing right next them is the Roman Empire. At some point, a man named Jesus approaches the jewel with a chisel and gives it a hard smack. Suddenly, a large new facet appears. Jesus says, "Come and see the new facet." Some of the gathered Jews and Romans listen, and move to the side a bit to see what's going on. To the Jews watching this, some are now able to see the center of the gem far more clearly from the perspective of the new facet that has appeared. One of them says to Jesus, "Which is the way to the Truth?"

Jesus regards the facet he has just created, points to it, and says, "This facet is me. The truth is directly through me. If you want the Truth, there it is." From where these Jews are standing, no other facet is open to them. When Jesus speaks, it is clear to them that if what he is saying is true, then Jesus is the only way to the truth that they can see. Some others are standing in such a way that they can't see the new facet at all, and when Jesus told them to move, they didn't bother. They've got their own facet, and it works for them.

Skip ahead 1500 years. Some very crafty folks have been fiddling around with lenses and tubes and manage to create some magnificent devices for peering into the large facet called Nature. These gadgets reveal all kinds of interesting things that are not visible to the naked eye. Conclusions are drawn.

Those peering into the Jesus facet become concerned; what are all of these people with their gadgets and gewgaws going on about? The truth is right in front of them and they're poking around with their lenses and tubes on some other facet entirely. They become angry. The Nature-peerers, discovering more and more through their lenses, begin to suspect that the Jesus facet never really made the truth visible after all. Some of the claims made by the two groups are incompatible. How can Truth be over there, they point angrily, when we clearly see it over here?

After a while, however, something wonderful begins to happen. Some of the people stand back and realize that depending on how you hold your head, you cand see Truth through both facets. They give up the security of looking at Truth through a single lens but they get an amazing new perspective in return. They realize that if you allow yourself to see in more than one way, you begin to see more complex (and sometimes more confusing) images of Truth. Some of them even begin to wonder if the Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists on the other side of the circle might not have some interesting perspectives as well.

This view of Truth is, to me, very compelling. It tells me that it's not necessary for everyone to agree. It tells me that we can accept information from multiple worldviews without compromising or obviating our own. It allows me to reserve the right to my universal truths without denying you yours.

So, from where my friend was standing, Jesus's death on the cross was critical, because that cross was the chisel that revealed a grand new facet to the world. Without the Resurrection, that facet could not have appeared; God brought new truth into the world by damaging it. This new facet is broad and large, and offers a view of the truth to people from a vast array of stations, statures, and vantage points. Is it the only way to truth? For those of us who will never see the other side of the circle, yes. Could someone come around the circle and see truth through our lens? Yes. Could we go around and see the truth through theirs? Yes. But here's the thing--I think that once you've seen this facet, you can never forget it. It impresses its beauty upon your very being; it reshapes you. I doubt that I would find any other facet as endlessly wondrous as this.