Yesterday I visited a Hindu temple with some friends.  It was an extraordinarily beautiful facility.  The people were extraordinary, too:  friendly, inclusive, welcoming. Many of those with whom I visited the temple, all of whom share my faith commitments, remarked on the adherents' openness to guests and strangers, adding that, unfortunately, many Christians could learn from this.
     It's tricky.  For the Hindu, the lines between truth and untruth are rather blurry, even nonexistent:  as the Hindu sees it, proper religion requires a delicate balancing of both, for in the big picture, both are necessary and, in a way, true.  Yet for the major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (though not as much in modern Judaism), truth is very much black and white:  there is truth, and there is untruth, and never shall the two meet. While from a logical standpoint this makes sense, implementing it in personal relations is decidedly more complicated, and at times rather messy.  How do we believe in one thing, and one thing only, in the face of the religious pluralism that being created in God's image and endowed with choice making capacities inevitably spawns?
     Clearly, two things cannot be truth simultaneously.  If truth is truth, it must be unique and set apart.  If therefore God, the only God, made the world and all that is in it (Psalm 24), and if this God expressed himself in one person and one person only (Jesus:  John 1:14), then there can only be one way to see it.
     Ah, but how do we see?  More importantly, how does God see our feeble efforts to see him?  In the end, although God is God is God, and Jesus is Jesus is Jesus, we should all wonder and always ponder and be open to how God reminds us of this.
     Gloriously, we all are not the same.