Your post puts me in a rough place because I dont want to have to call any brothers out, but that is a typical example of a "church" response.
What a surprise. I wish I had seen that coming. Oh, wait, I did.
As I said earlier, this is the Conservative Christian's forum, and you are only allowed to post here in fellowship. If you want to be involved in a deeper discussion, you need to at least be respectful about it.
So me suggesting that you are transferring your negative experiences with one church (which you freely described in another thread) to other churches is not even the remotest possibility? I ask because you have made several generalizations which I have spoken to which disprove what you said, which you have ignored. Why don't your respond to them? The fact is, they are generalizations which speaks to a very limited number of churches, but you choose to make generalizations so that you don't have to speak to the issues on a deeper level, because doing so would disprove your point.
The truth is more people on this planet hate us than love us because they feel judged and unloved by us and it is THAT mentality that acts as a vehicle to deliver those feelings.
Matthew 10:16 ¶ Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
Matthew 10:17 But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues;
Matthew 10:22 And ye shall be hated of all [men] for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
John 15:18 ¶ If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before [it hated] you.
The truth is, Christianity is a hard road. What it teaches isn't popular, it forces you to change into the image of God (in other words, become a new person), and people are going to hate you without even knowing you because of what you believe.
The church response to people that are against us (for reasons caused by us as a whole) is typically "your impression is off and skewed", when generally speaking their impression is forged by their interactions with many christians of many churches (and it usually is the conservative churches that cause them their grief). I'm not saying that YOU specifically are like that, I don't know you at all. From my experience in many churches (not all of them, I attend a great church right now), most of them disassociate from the metalhead kids, the kids that wear black and have piercings, and even the people that have problems that take more effort to help them with than a simple "I accept jesus into my heart and now everything in my life is solved". I used to work as a bill collector for the longest time and when someone didn't want to pay their bill, my mind would automatically go to "okay, on to the next person who may want to pay their bill and scrap this call". A lot of conservative churches treat the non-believers in that exact same manner. I can tell you for a fact that my approach would have been a really weak approach to bill collecting if I wasn't as good at leaving debtors with bricks in their underwear as I was, because every situation requires work. The typical "conservative" church is usually unwilling to put in that work because they want a quick glory story.
Just to clarify, I dont mean work as in continually shoving the bible down their throat and making them accept christ and all that kind of stuff, I just mean spending time as bros and not abandoning them at the first hint of "god is not for me". As christians, we need to willingly continuously associate with those people with no strings attached and with the mindset that this person may never choose to accept christ, but I will still hang out with them anyways and be dependable for them
My suggestion is that you try to differentiate between "the church" and churches. It would be nice if churches were made up only of "the church", but it is not so. Not all who cry "Lord, Lord" are His. Christ's church is the body of believers, wherever they are. Churches are man-made organizations that were started to try to fulfill the role given to the church. But they are not "the church". Some conservative churches are pretty fundamental in nature, some are more open to accepting people as they are. I attend one that is more that way, all are invited in and they have had heavy metal rock Christian groups come to kick off the youth programs for a few years now.
I have to say that I sense a lot of hostility in you, and that just slams the door in most places. When someone is openly condescending to someone else, that someone else is not going to go out of their way to cater to that person.
