Faithful Christian engagement in education means both being at home and at odds with dominant culture. This stance of critical participation should produce an unbearable tension: can one both live in solidarity and dissent? Yet this unbearable tension is often not present in Christian experience--why? This article suggests four reasons: the fragmentation of the Scriptural story, a comfortable cohabitation in a seemingly neutral culture, a Christendom mindset that accepts a privatized role, and an eclipse of the antithesis by an emphasis on creation. The articles closes suggesting that seeing education in terms of witness to God's kingdom may help us recover this tension. (Contains 35 notes.)