Here’s an unedited block toward the end of the last chapter. I am in a hurry to get some samplings up to give an indication of the articulate and often more effective “un-darkly-ness” of Dark’s journey from darkly to less-darkly, always acknowledging the incompleteness of that journey.

Any consideration of the significance of a resurrected Jesus requires a long look at why a world would find him distasteful. Woodie Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ” is a robustly orthodox song in its insistence that American culture (like all others) would not have him, and while this is probably an uncontroversial point for anyone willing to voice the traditional prayers of confession, we’re often in danger of assum without much thought that we re not the kind of people who would put Jesus to death. We sometimes presume we’re in general agreement with what Jesus has to say, as if all “decent, God fearing people” are. But a consideration of the personalities in the previous, chapter and a casual glance at the Sermon on the Mount might have us wondering if we haven’t created for ourselves a domesticated Jesus. Does American Christianity suffer opposition? If so is it resisted for its Christ likeness? Is there a continuum?

I believe that there is. But we’re often guilty of assuming continuity with unthinking presumption, speaking of Jesus as if he is easily incorporated into our lifestyles while viewing too radical an apprenticeship to his lifestyle as unseemly or irreverent. We rightly put him on a pedestal (Jesus’ perfect life), but this can sometimes serve to place real discipleship out of consideration. In this sense, I often think that people who at least take Jesus seriously as a teacher, as the wisest individual who ever lived, are entering into the kingdom in ways that those who only want to have their sins removed for the afterlife aren’t. If our interest in Jesus as an atoning sacrifice cancels out our attentiveness to the things he did and said, something has gone horribly wrong. Do we want the benefit of God’s blessing minus the specifics of Jesus’ commands? Do we think there’s a difference?

When we think of his lifestyle as King and Day and Berrigan force us to do, we see him as a real world individual that human society can hardly tolerate. It was this sort of realization that W. H. Auden cited as the reason for his conversion. While Muhammad and Buddha and Confucius struck Auden as reasonable figures not too difficult to agree with, he experienced Jesus as a stumbling block, a man whose visions elicited from Auden’s heart the words “Crucify him,” In Auden’s view, it isn’t the case that, if there were no Jesus, we’d probably invent him, because Jesus’ summons to a different order, a kingdom coming, subverts all our favorite sanctified orders and mythic realities, exposing and undoing our unacknowledged groupthink.

But have we transansmogriified Jesus to suit our human instrumentalities? On the question of who killed him. many Americans would agree with Mel Gibson that we all did. But do we daily acknowledge our hostility to his kingdom, noting all the ways that we do not acknowledge him? Do we recognize the crucifying impulse in our anger toward the neighbor, the opponent, or the enemy combatant? Do we try to make it a private issue?

It’s important to remember that Jesus’ civilization doesn’t come to us naturally. If we forget, we mistake our good intentions for God’s purposes and become a Babylon impenetrable to prophetic witness. If Jesus’ gospel, the announcement and description of God’s kingdom, is the standard by which all human orderings will be judged (our politics measured by his), how are we doing? What will it mean for America when the cosmos is liberated from its Egypt? Are we on the Lord ‘s side in this process? Will we know how to call it good news? Do we know now? There are no foregone conclusions in these discussions, and according to the Jewish Christian tradition, all manner of things will somehow be made well. But what do we think this means? Will we know the smell of victory? Is it what we’re looking for?