I've only met a very few Christians who seemed to match what I have been told a Christian should present and "be" according to their faith. One was a pastor as a church my family attended for quite some time. He was open, honest, curious, sensitive and tried his hardest to present nothing but good.
However - even this particular pastor had to make the obligatory sermons denouncing homosexuality, and tacitly supported the preaching of many other ridiculous articles of "faith" - like turning the pulpit over to other pastors-in-training of the church who did things like openly bad-mouth the ideas of "secular humanism," literally call people to do strange things like speak in tongues, and tell stories about things "God was telling them" and, in their story, when they kept getting denied on that path, switched it around to state that it must have been Satan telling them to pursue whatever the heck it was.
There was also one particular service during which a particularly outlandish, outspoken and eclectic member of the church stood up, went to the front, and began speaking as if he were Jesus in the first-person. He was promptly grabbed and dragged forcefully out of the church, kicking and screeching - and that "good" pastor was among the ones doing the dragging.
It was in that moment that I realized that even this good pastor, a man I found to be very grounded in reality, was STILL prone to harboring hypocrisy and double-standards - and from what I could tell, it was all the fault of his adherence to his faith. The man they dragged out was making claims no more outlandish than the pastor himself made on a regular basis in church - how could this pastor possibly know that the man wasn't the second coming of Christ? How could he know that the man hadn't been imbued with the spirit of Jesus in that moment? What evidence did he have against that proposition? The same sorts of evidence he would ask me to provide against the ideas of his God's reality, no doubt - and yet here he was, dragging the man out.
Christianity brings out the worst in people in many ways, honestly. I have seen it time and time again. Passive aggressiveness, incredulity at even the most common or well-intentioned things that aren't explicitly "Christian," claims made without regard to any ability to discern the truth of the things being said, calls of "amen" going up around the church after some of the most inane statements I have heard in my life, people crying and writhing with "the spirit" which I have never once seen come to any actual result other than the further confirmation of these people's own biases, missionaries thinking that they know better than everyone else on EARTH what "the truth" is and believing themselves oh so righteous for going around convincing others of things that they themselves have no business believing, let alone propagating, people truly believing that their own, personal opinions have the backing of some higher power. There is no end of intellectual travesty to be had in Christianity, even as there is also good being done by its adherents - though, even that usually not without some form of attempt to convert/convince.
On the whole, I simply don't like Christianity. I find it quite terrible, and the people who practice it quite insufferable when they are bent on working it into every aspect of their lives and relationships.
). All my other experiences where neutral or beautiful. One priest in my first confession spent a couple hours with me in his office. The Church retreat was great and I like how you can have private devotion time and much resources in the Church.
