For the children, it was often about teh cognitive dissonance about being told whom to hate and who the kids already had relationships that they knew these as good people.
I grew up in the acapella Church of Christ and attended that denomination and even Abilene Christian University for a year.
The sheer weight of the hypocrisy and the hatred towards gays and women was what drove me away to a different denomination and theology.
I had many gay friends who lived moral lives -- they didn't lie, cheat, steal, commit acts of violence, etc. But they were condemned and humiliated in church. I knew some that even attempted suicide over the psychological abuse (and I didn't know any who were actually sent to conversion therapy). On the other hand, business people whom I knew exploited their workers and cheated them of their pay were OK.
They were like white washed tombs on the outside and full of rottenness on the inside to quote Jesus' attacks on the Pharisees.
I knew many women who were capable of leading in the church, but they were not allowed to. Even though there are examples of women leading in the official book of ACTS and many more in the non-canon second book of the first century church, misogyny pushed Paul's prooftexted admonitions about women to keep them from power.
For me it came to a head when I was at ACU in the life and teaching of Jesus class when I asked the Professor what Jesus would do with the MILLIONS of dollars spent on an obelisk in front of the new building for the Bible Studies department. Would Jesus have spent money on an obelisk that is on the highest hill in town that is lit up at night that says 'let your light shine like a light upon the hill' or would he have built a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, or something like that? The response from the Religion professor was:"The alumni wanted the obelisk and that is what they donated for." I repeated, "I do not think you understood what I was asking. I want to know what you think Jesus would do with that money, not what the alumni wanted." He repeated as if he had been told to parrot the line "The alumni wanted to build the obelisk." I asked one more time (as I heard the chairs of others in class moving away from me because I was making them uncomfortable), "You said and it was clear that when Jesus first came into town he healed the sick, drove out demons, and met the needs of the people on his way to the temple and THEN he started preaching. It would seem that the equivalent here would be some way of dealing with hunger, poverty, homeless, or something like that. What would Jesus do with that $5 million?"
I never got a satisfactory answer. I left after that year disappointed that although I loved the people in my congregation back home, that I could not reconcile that the denomination was so far from Jesus' teachings. Similar thing took many years for Jimmy Carter to say basically the same thing about the Southern Baptists.
That's my story. I found a denomination that supports LGBTQ+, women clergy, and living out Matthew 25 and the two great commandments. I have used vacation time to go on mission work trips to help after flooding or derechos, plant and weed community gardens, clean out overgrown cemetaries of African Americans that were long neglected by white owners, and so many more projects. We don't preach. We go to help like Jesus would. We want them to know that they are seen, valued, and loved as children of God. Too many of my friends who grew up in the hate filled world of Evangelical Christianity in the US wither stayed there or lost all faith in humanity and God.
= new reply since forum marked as read
