We are all negotiating how to navigate the turbulence of our time, which, by most sober accounts, is marked by accelerating change—if not outright decline, disenfranchisement, regression, and loss. In my reading, both a symptom and a cause of this acceleration is the growing suspicion that we are on our own—or, as I recently heard quoted in a sermon, "we are the ones we've been waiting for." It makes a certain kind of sense. Human beings are driving much of this change and creating the conditions that contribute to decline and decay. Why shouldn't we—the only apparent agents of history—also be the ones to manipulate and direct change toward progress? Why shouldn't we capitalize on the possibilities latent within the present in order to actualize a better future? Why shouldn't we be responsible for our own fate, even our own salvation? And who am I to suggest otherwise? But I am captivated by an alternative thought: that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the go...