In contemporary Evangelical worship there seem to be two major streams: the intellectual and the ecstatic. The intellectual stream discloses God by providing a correct understanding of him. The ecstatic stream discloses God by feeling. The intellectual stream says too much about God; the ecstatic stream feels God too much. Both streams bypass faith, the true nature of which contradicts our experience rather than confirms it. Faith is not accepting true statements about God; nor is faith feeling God's presence. Faith affirms a God I cannot understand and affirms a God I cannot feel. The great loss in both streams is the sense of mystery and awe. If I understand God there is no mystery remaining. If I feel God there is no mystery remaining. The only mystery left is to seek more and more understanding and to seek to feel more and more. Both streams, in attempting to make God immediate to either our understanding or our feelings, loses God, who in truth is not understandable nor feelable. What we understand is a construct of our minds and what we feel are our emotions. Neither offer true transformation because in neither have we moved outside of ourselves. As a result, lives following the worship experience continue to be shaped by the culture which is experienced outside the sphere of worship, no matter how "wonderful' the worship experience may have been.

That which is said about God in worship and that which is experienced must leave room for that which cannot be said and that which cannot be experienced. It is this sense of "otherness" which will stay with us outside the doors.

In my own experience I attempted to fill the void in my life through inappropriate means that eventually took on an addictive life of their own. My pietistic background insisted that the void be filled with greater devotion. My evangelical background insisted that the void be eliminated through discipline and correct understanding. Both methods were attempts of rescue and ended in failure. No amount of devotion could fill the void for long and no doctrine, no matter how "correct," could extinguish its presence. Devotion left me empty after the devotional aura had passed; doctrine simply covered the void with religious plating. The void remained and eventually filled itself.

A true application of the cross brings acceptance of the void as a very real, inherent part of the human condition in its finitude. The void is not to be filled or covered but endured as an integral part of my human condition. This is bearing the cross. The void cannot be escaped, not can I be rescued from it. However, in the grace of God I can enter its domain and endure its pervasiveness in the strength of the cross. Jesus is my example and his cross is my victory. The cross he bore in life was his existence in the midst of fallen humanity, a cross he bore in faithfulness to his heavenly Father. It ended in a literal cross with saving import to all who follow him. He experienced no rescue from the cross of life or the cross of Golgotha. Resurrection vindicated his faithful human existence.

The rescue offered by Evangelicals does not rescue but further deepens the condition in which its adherents find themselves. Consequently, it has to be repeated again and again. The Evangelical cross of rescue relieves the believer from that very condition he or she needs to encounter. Salvation is in name only; the condition remains, only more deeply submerged beneath the religious rhetoric. The message of the cross is lost amid the euphoric panacea of the moment. Evangelicals will one day weary with all the rescue attempts and deplete themselves of all rescue materials. Perhaps at that point they will once again be driven to the cross.