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It is impolite, to say the least, to bring up uncomfortable indications that while our surfaces are brighter and cleaner than ever before, something is hollow beneath. Average Americans go about their business apparently untroubled by two hundred thousand breast enlargement operations a year, 1.2 million annual abortions, and the 40 percent of Web traffic (by the most conservative estimates) that is pornographic. As for the conditions inside the average offshore sneaker factory or the sheer tonnage of weapons foisted on the world by American exporters—hey, is that the new Thunderbird convertible parked outside?

Soap bubbles, the chemists tell us, get thinner and thinner until they are just a few molecules deep, and there is a similar relentless logic to the fixation on surface. A recent billboard campaign promoting India's largest media conglomerate juxtaposed hip Western-looking models with the following copy: "It is better to be cool and dead than alive and uncool." Aside from articulating the unspoken thoughts of teenagers everywhere, this is a startlingly frank version of that old thing about "whitewashed tombs."

Evangelism for surface improvements is perfectly acceptable, whether for diet plans or for the latest brushed-titanium piece of technology. But going deeper—that we can't allow. And this is why, in the most diverse yet peacefully tolerant society on the planet, the mere language of evangelism is so routinely linked to images of violence. For all true evangelism is violent—as Karl Barth famously said, God's "yes" to humanity carries with it a "no." The evangelist dares to suggest that what to all appearances is a successful life is in fact a huge, empty barn about to be torn down overnight. The good news disrupts the surface. For conversion to happen, the bubble must be broken.

None of this is to say that the inherent violence of evangelism justifies manipulative, let alone coercive, shortcuts. But perhaps it is good that evangelism, even in its most culturally tame forms, is dogged by cultural suspicion. It reminds us of the one who came not to bring peace, but a sword, and it reminds us that in order to bear the good news, we must first ourselves be pierced.

re:generation quarterly, April 1, 2001