“Professor Donnison has given  a vivid illustration of this from personal experience in the Navy. He  speaks of days spent in a transit camp where men were coming and  going all the time and no enduring bonds were formed between them.  In that camp, he says, one had to nail everything down or it would be  stolen. Then he speaks of life on board ship on active service. The same  men are his companions. But now he knows that any of his fellow crew  members would without hesitation risk his own life for one of his mates.  The same men were involved in both situations: in one they were bound  together by a common purpose; in the other they were not. In the two  different social contexts, their personal behavior was totally different”

-From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin.