Penal substitutionary atonement tells you that salvation concerns the broken relationship you have with God. You are facing God's judgment, so you need to fix that problem. Or, better put, you need to accept the gift that God repaired the relationship in the death of Jesus. Regardless, the focus is upon the God/Me relationship.
What this view misses about salvation are the horizontal aspects of salvation, the fractured Me/You and Us/Them relationships we see all around us. One of the ways penal substitutionary atonement distorts Christianity is how you can be "saved" in relation to God while treating fellow human beings horribly. This is what theologians mean when they criticize penal substitutionary atonement as "individualistic." Penal substitutionary atonement lacks moral, political, social, economic, and environmental implications and imperatives.
In the Jewish tradition these horizontal concerns toward each other and the earth are called tikkun olam, "the repair of the world." Penal substitutionary atonement misses tikkun olam. Salvation isn't just fixing my God problem, that if I don't accept Jesus as Lord I'm going to hell. Salvation is involved in the repair of the world. All around us the world is torn and ripped, and we are called to the great and ongoing labors of healing and mending. Christian views of salvation have to include how your life, today, is called to this work of repair.
