Salvation as rescue is at the heart of the Evangelical message: rescue from sin, rescue from self, rescue from damnation, etc. However, the salvation of Jesus was and is a salvation of suffering, i.e., the cross. He was not rescued from suffering; he was rescued in it and through it. That is not to say that we cannot have joy in our suffering; it is to say that we cannot have joy apart from it. For Evangelicals, the rescue motif results in an ever-increasing need for further rescue; soon the cross is not enough--it only rescues from sin. Rescue is then needed from boredom, inactivity, want, lack of fulfillment, prayerlessness, the demonic, addiction, a hostile environment, and on and on ad nauseam. The Evangelical church is forced to provide an ever-widening sphere of rescue ministries which effectively take believers out of their own historical spheres of struggle and suffering; sin is submerged, but not confronted, beneath an external euphoria of relgious platitudes. They, and the church as well, eventually become separated from themselves and from the very world they are to evangelize; hence, their impotence in the face of sinful culture. Jesus' cross is not borne in one's personal experience of cross--the only message that will communicate effectively to a dying and suffering world. Rather, the cross of Jesus becomes a metaphor for freedom from self, suffering, responsibility, and the world. In other words, it becomes a symbol with no experiential content. It is a flag carried by those who espouse its victory but who refuse to share in its battle. The salvation of Jesus is bearing the cross on all one's aspirations, in the midst of one's sufferings, in the face of our sinful side and its consequences, with the hope and faith that the cross alone is sufficient. The cross does not rescue us from ourselves or our historical context; it takes us further within where transformation takes place. American culture needs a penetrating, transforming cross, not a cross external to it, safely distanced in religious garb and jargon.