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Though theology, like nearly every human endeavor, is a collaborative process, not many eminent theologians turn in articles with the names of co-authors attached. But Miroslav Volf's article arrived bearing no fewer than five additional names—Joseph Cumming, David Miller, Andrew Saperstein, Christian Scharen, and Travis Tucker, his colleagues at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

That generosity is a good clue to Volf's contribution to Christian theology. His 1996 book Exclusion and Embrace was both a serious work of biblical and theological investigation and a deeply personal reflection on the horrors of sectarian violence in his native Croatia, setting a standard for personal engagement with its subject that theology, unfortunately, rarely meets.

The Yale Center for Faith and Culture is dedicated to advancing faith as "a way of life," not just a way of thinking—a way that should transform every human practice. While the essay responds to the question we've been addressing in CT's 50th anniversary year—How can followers of Christ be a counterculture for the common good?—the Yale Center staff's collaboration is also an eloquent answer all by itself.

There is a remarkable image in the closing pages of Scripture that has become a touchstone for the way my colleagues and I think about faith and culture. Amid its descriptions of the New Jerusalem, Revelation includes "the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations" (Rev. 22:2). The tree holds out hope that whole cultures will be healed and mended, becoming places where people can flourish. And it sets an agenda for faith as a way of life that contributes to that flourishing, in anticipation, here and now.

Too often, however, Christian faith neither mends the world nor helps human beings thrive. To the contrary, it seems to shatter things into pieces, to choke what's new and beautiful before it has chance to take root, to trample underfoot what's good and true.

Some of faith's damaging effects are a matter of perspective. Prizing power, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche derided Christianity for its "active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak."

But even according to its own standards, Christian faith has been put to the most scandalous uses. As we reflect on how followers of Christ can exemplify "a counterculture for the common good," it's important to keep these ill effects of faith in mind. I'll call them "malfunctions" and group them under two rubrics: idleness of faith and oppressiveness of faith.

He was a "good Christian man," he even taught Sunday school, and yet he ended up presiding over one of the worst business frauds in history, involving thousands of people and billions of dollars. I could be referring to any number of executives in the business-page headlines of the past several years, from Enron to WorldCom and beyond. Why didn't their faith prevent their crimes? I suspect at least three factors were at work in their faith's spectacular failure.

First, the lure of temptation. In a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work. Even people committed to high moral standards succumb.

Giving in is as old as humanity—but so is victory over temptation. Virtuous character matters more than moral knowledge. Like Adam and Eve in the Fall or the self-confessing apostle Paul in Romans 7, most of those who do wrong know what's right but find themselves irresistibly attracted to evil. Faith idles when character shrivels.

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October 2006, Vol. 50, No. 10