In this book, we will explore the reasons behind evangelicalism’s obsession with a minimalist gospel and the powerful, even desperate and irrational, hold this truncated gospel has appears to have on the evangelical church. In our examination we will discover that what drives evangelicals to find shelter in a truncated gospel is not sin, biblically understood, but a false and frustrated aspiration for a transcendent and deified existence. This is what the Serpent promised in the Garden of Eden, that we can become “like God” and Adam and Eve took the bait. We will see how this false aspiration still haunts us today and leads us to distort the biblical gospel that is meant to save us.