One of the military's strategies for defeating enemies is "divide and conquer." This strategy is also known as the devil's favourite method to destroy an individual or a communal life. It seems to be that nowadays our world has become more divided and fragmentary than ever before. The world is divided into developed and underdeveloped nations. The developed countries are divided into G8 and G20 nations. Living places are divided into urban areas and rural areas. Society categorizes people with many different types of segregated boxes according to their race, gender, age, social status, income, education, religion, and others.
A few decades ago, a generation gap between older and younger people played a major role of social problem. How about today? In addition to this generation gap, there are a lot of gaps among the same generation such as a skills gap between those who know how to use modern technology and those who don't, a financial gap between those who have and those who have not, and even a huge psychological gap between those who know who they are and those who are still struggling to find themselves. Thus internal divisions and polarizations among people seem to be more serious social issues than the other factors.
A very interesting point is that Christian life has always put its base on a community, how to work together to serve God and others. Christian moral value is found in a good, right and proper relationship with God and others. And the Christian work ethic is required to make a better, just and liveable society, rather than just pursuing each one's own prosperity and well being. That is the reason why a Christian has to associate, work, mingle and share with others in order to achieve the common good for the community both in faith and secular life as well. This Christian approach to the communal life has contributed to our society learning how to work and live together with others in harmony, cooperation and peace.
As St. Paul said, "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12), each person has to be a part of the community and at the same time the community has to exist for each individual's well being. A car consists of many different parts, but the function, work and value of the car, the whole, is always significantly more than the sum of parts themselves. So only when each individual is willing to become a part of the community where they are living, then the community can provide better, and more significant services than what it does without them. In communal life arithmetic does not follow a mathematical result, for example, 1 plus 1 always equals 2. Rather in a community it can always become more than 2 or less because of the synergy of people and the level of each person's contribution to the community. Indeed the whole is always more than the sum of the parts!
