To be honest, although I hear people say what the OP says, I'm never clear what that means.
So, as I would define it: many churches don't follow the teachings of Christ. When I say that Christ said that all men would know you are his followers by the love you shown one another, I have had the following excuses:
1) People don't recognize our Christ-like love because it is tough love, like discipling a child. (So all men will know you by the love you show others - they just won't recognize it as love?)
2) Following God's commands alone is showing our love. (Is there a verse that quotes, "If a person is hungry, you must feed them"?, because that is what he says to the sheep. Or was he thanking them for loving their neighbor as themselves, and in so, literally loving Christ? Why does Christ not praise the priest and Levite who follow cleanliness laws before going to temple to such an extreme that they don't help the beaten man that the Samaritan does?
3) You mean by loving your neighbor, you want to hold their hand all the way to hell. (Love, defined by this person, is the same as being so permissible as to lose their soul - you know, like humbling yourself before sinners, putting yourself on their level, and then asking if you could eat with them.)
So why is Jesus being removed? The same reason Pharisees wanted him killed - he shows the hallowness of their holiness. He exposes their hypocrisy of pointing out the speck in an other's eye when you have a log in your own. He humbles those who exalt themselves before others in the name of God to ferl superior. Like Simon, he forces peopke to face the truth, that the sinner they condemn may show more faith, and more love than they ever have, because they are whitewashed tombs.
I remember reading an opinion piece where a pastor spoke to his congregation about considering allowing GLBT people to come to their services. An elderly woman approached him and said she strongly disagreed with him. He said, "If Jesus stood at the door, do you believe he would turn them away, or open the door widely, and welcome the person in?" She said, "well, Jesus would probably let them in....but he would be wrong!"
I don't condemn her. I can empathize with her. She's human, and sometimes we fall back on our humanness, and not the divine soul we were made to be. There was a time when it was easier to point to others, brand them as sinners, and condemn them to hell. One could find Scripture to back your opinion up, without prayer to the Spirit for guidance, without the research of translation and context that challenged your belief.
Christ was like that with his disciples He challenged their justification for revenge of an eye for an eye, with daring them to turn the other cheek. He challenged their guess of how many times one could forgive their neighbor from 7 to 70x7, forgive others the same amount of times you wish to be forgiven from the Father. We live in a time that, as Archie Bunker laments, Girls were girls and men were men, to being aware of transgendered people or those who identify as nonbinary, or even inter-sexed. For those who believe that the people of Genesis held the same knowledge as we do today, it challenges their faith in the bible. It doesn't for me. To expect the same understanding of science is to expect my knowledge as a child to be the same as my understandings 50 years later.
"Tough love" is actually following Christ - to love not just your friends but also your enemies. That's hard, and so we pray for divine love. It's tough to stand up for your Muslim neighbor's right of Freedom of religion to someone in your congregation unfairly stereotyping and making false accusations of someone they have never met. It's tough to feel empathy for a community that yours may have oppressed for 100s of years, and speak out against police brutality and unlawful murder by protesting witj Black Lives Matter when your friends say, "Don't all lives matter? Besides, he was committing a crime," as if passing the death penalty for, well today it is alleged forgery, is acceptable.
So they opt for the easy love - Angry Sky God of the Old Testament who would kill you for looking at him sideways. They are the son that stayed that seems angry the Prodigal Son returned, wanting to know why he gets a party and you don't. It is easy to think other people are bad, condemn others, but tough to admit our own shortcomings, change our own behavior, or pray to have our hearts transformed. It is tough to admit that as a Christian, I am not holier than anyone, not more loved than the nonbeliever, not on better terms with God because I pray often, have some VIP status. It's tough to humble myself before others, to be a gracious servant to mankind. It's tough to challenge long held beliefs that women are property of men, that women are lesser than men, or that women shouldn't even speak in church, and to come to an understanding that God speaks to and through each of us, and calls women, despite what Paul says.
But most of all, it is tough to love our neighbor as ourselves in a US culture that teaches competition rather than community, to serve self first, using your temple as a billboard that brags about the money you overpaid for a t-shirt to show your worth is what you own. Christ calls for a radical departure, to care for others as if they were Christ himself, to forgive as you are forgiven, to give love, not because it is earned, but as a way of thanking God for loving you by grace alone.
That's tough love, and above all things, what we should be praying for.
