The Many Faced God

For several years now I have been watching the HBO series Game of Thrones, which is set in a medieval world of knights, kings, queens, dragons and monsters.  It is also a world with many competing religions.  Until recently, the religious aspect only showed up very briefly in tangential comments about those who kept to the "old gods," or those who put their faith in "the seven" and lately an interesting and cult of "the faceless men" has taken an important role in the character arc of Arya Stark.  The faceless men are servants of "the many faced god." As is the case with most of the religions in the show, this cult bears only a passing resemblance to the religions of our world, but it is notable because along with whatever sorcery based religion is represented by the Red Woman who has Stannis Baratheon in her thrall, it appears to be monotheistic.
I am working my way through the novels and I notice that these sorts of things are discussed in more detail there, so I may be able to learn more from them than from the show, but I find the idea of the many faced god rather fascinating, because it mirrors a rather ubiquitous assumption about faith in the modern/postmodern world: pluralism.  Not necessarily the belief that there are many gods, but rather the belief that many different faiths provide some pathway to whatever the truth of God actually is.  That truth remains largely a mystery, out of necessity, and possibly for our own protection.
Let me say that, while I no longer see pluralism as a "dirty word," I do understand that it has several very real limitations.  However, in light of the general trajectory of world events, I wonder if maybe pluralism is the only approach to our very real differences that is going to keep us from destroying one another in a massive conflagration that will probably have grim religious elements.
I am not going to say that all religions are equally valid in understanding the nature of God, which would be dishonest.  What I would like to encourage is that followers of Jesus Christ, ought to be a little more circumspect and compassionate in their approach to those who hold to a different set of beliefs.  In short, I think we need to stop labeling others, sometimes even other Christians, heretics and infidel.
The Children of Abraham have some rather large logs in our eyes when it comes to going on the warpath against the very people we're supposed to be a blessing to and for.  Muslims blame and hate Jews and Christians for the fact that they inhabit parts of the world that are backwards and impoverished. Jews and Christians, while we have largely managed to make nice with each other since the end of WWII, still sort of mistrust one another (a lot of water under that bridge) and are united by an often justified fear of radical Islam.  Atheists think we're all benighted fools laboring under a dark superstition, and agnostics, well they mostly don't know what to think, that's why they're agnostic.
And I just used more religious stereotypes than I'm really comfortable with, and I wonder if you noticed.
Categorical classification helps us understand our narrative.  Whether it's race, creed, or what football team you root for, the world becomes easier to deal with if you clump people together.  If you're left out there to deal with everyone as an individual it gets sort of difficult to do certain things, like wage war.  War doesn't make any sense if you think about the individual people you are fighting, if you see them as human beings with hopes and dreams, with families and homes, only a sociopath or a psychopath would be okay with mass killing.  We must group them by ideology and by some categorical principal: the king or nation they swear allegiance to, the god they follow, where and how they were born, and even their social status.  We have to see them as other and lesser in order to truly rationalize killing them.  What we do is essentially make them faceless people, and that in turn allows us to see them as evil.
Pluralism, for all it's faults, pushes back against that wave
Better theologians than me have pointed out that until we learn to see God in other people we will never truly know God.  In fact, one of the earliest challenges of the church was learning to love each other as God has loved us.  The first letter of John says it this way: "Those who say, 'I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen." (1 John 4:20, NRSV)
Many people will try to explain that away by saying that brothers and sisters refers to people in the church.  Fine.  How is that working out?  Let me know when you've perfected it, and then we need to go talk to some other people you're supposed to love. I'm pretty sure, thanks to the parable of the Good Samaritan, that we're probably not supposed to be that narrow with our love.
I suppose, if you take a certain view of salvation and such, that the most loving thing you can do for anyone is to get them to accept Christ by any means necessary.  I might agree, except for the rather stubborn reality that Jesus definitely did not see it as his job to convince, convict or coerce anyone into believing him.
What Jesus does is present the good news that the kingdom of heaven is near and begins to flesh out the implications of that good news.  What strikes me about his methods is that he rarely tries to scare people.  Oh, he gets a little stern with the religious authorities who are a stumbling block, he warns people to be careful of the little ones, but most of his public teachings are about what the kingdom is like, in terms that pretty much everyone is able to understand.
He is much more pluralistic in his approach than any Jew of his era had a right to be.  In large part, this is what drew the ire of the establishment: his wanton crossing of political, social, racial and religious lines.  Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes, even (gulp) Romans, are all recorded in the Gospels as people who heard, believed and were touched by Jesus' ministry.  And that's going cheese off the fundamentalists and puritans no matter what.
How are you ever going to keep your message pure and theologically correct if you're that indiscriminate about who you tell and who you touch and who you eat with?
Jesus was not wishy-washy or bland in his proclamations and teachings, but he was compassionate and loving to people whom society had deemed unworthy.  The prospect of using fear and manipulation to bring people into the fold was and is utter nonsense.  You're not bringing them to Jesus, you're not showing them the way and the truth and the life, you're herding them into another sheepfold altogether, and so I guess that makes you a bandit.
Jesus was astonishingly patient with individuals and rather intolerant of principalities and powers.  He could call the Pharisees a brood of vipers, but sit and teach Nicodemus patiently and lovingly.  He understood that pluralism is necessary for individuals to come to God.  Each person is unique and God must have many faces in order to be in a good and loving relationship with so many different individuals.  But, as a very old prayer reminded him: "God is One."  Don't try to unravel that mystery, let it be precisely that, a mystery.
I believe that Jesus is the way to the Father, I believe in the Trinity and the Incarnation, but because I do, I will try my best to follow Jesus, that means being a part of the Good News, not a continuing link in the violent and hateful bad news.  I hope that if it came down to it, I would have the courage to die for my faith, but since Jesus is the author of that faith I can't see any way to justify killing in his name.  We need to stop that.  Yes, I think it would make God happy if all people of all faiths stopped killing in God's name.  I think our crucified Lord calls us to go first.