Truth, Truth. Who has the Truth?

I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as truth. Only different paradigms that act like lenses for us to discover the world.

After saying it, the statement, sounds a little too -- wrong? No Truth? That is like being run over by a steamroller when trying to put this world together in some sort of functional continuum.

So what am I trying to say exactly. I think we only know truth from the way we view the world. Trying to view the world from another person's lens is difficult, if next to impossible. I believe we can make copies of another lens and try it on in hopes we see things clearer. Everyones lens has taken years of modifying, grinding, and reshaping to become uniquely their's. Making a haphazard copy and trying it on for size hardly works without giving it an honest try and some tweaking.

I think this is still what bugs me so much about Christianity to this day. There seems to be an over reliance on a single lens. The other weekend I was at a wedding when I over heard a Preacher mention to the bride's father that he stayed up late the night before talking to some guy. The pastor mentioned not too long ago this guy was in a bad spot. Then what got me was, to further explain, how much of a bad spot this person was in he used the disclaimer "Not too long ago he was an atheist". I mean for all the things to put a person in a bad spot depression, addiction, abuse, or suicidal tendencies. To get his point across he said Atheism . (I don't know if the guy was any of these things -- just examples) This for whatever reason got under my skin. I guess from someone who has taken an earnest look through that lens I find the thought that atheism is the end all of total human discrepancy as offensive. Frankly, atheism as a paradigm can be immensely liberating. And not even in the oh there is no God I can do anything I want sort of way. Peering through Atheism for me allowed me the freedom to throw off the shackles of an all seeing eye in the sky, that was willing to let me be swallowed up by hell at the drop of a hat.

Seeing this and being free of that image of God. I have felt the liberty to explore new lenses. More complex, dynamic, and vivid lenses. Ones that are not shackled by dogma and rules. Lenses that allow me to see God as more than the judge of our eternal destinations. I am currently playing with the view God is nothing more than the energy that seems to bind all living things. That when we connect with that energy we become more fulfilled, alive, conscious, and perhaps even saved. Now, before you start calling me some new age, mystic, hippie. Remember what I said about truth I didn't say I believe this as a truth only find it a compelling lens.

What is your lens? Have tried on others? Do you still have the same one your parents gave you? Why? God knows it isn't for lack of other logical rational lenses. ( I still think Agnosticism as the most scientific and logical lens -- yet logic isn't everything.) The question though that haunts me though is this. Why, without earnestly peering through another's lens, do we continue to claim that we have the only Truth? Then again maybe I'm wrong and there is only one Truth out there -- Who has it? Whose lens should be trying to find?