We might say that two thousand years ago, Jesus inserted into the human imagination a radical new vision of God—nondominating, nonviolent, supreme in service, and self-giving. That vision was so radically new and different that we have predictably spent our first two thousand years trying to reconcile it with the old visions of God that it challenged. Maybe only now, as we acknowledge Christianity to be, in light of our history, what the novelist Walker Percy called a “failed religion,” are we becoming ready to let Jesus’s radical new vision replace the old vision instead of being accommodated within it. Could some sectors of Christian faith finally be ready to worship and follow the God that Jesus was trying to show them?
