This is very interesting, as I certainly have some of the same issues, although maybe not to the extent. I’m incredibly disappointed with my fellow Evangelicals at times (to the point where I don’t know if it’s a useful label anymore) and yet at times I also see some pretty great things, especially at the local level.
Just as an immediate example, my church just raised $400k in the last couple week since we got the stay-at-home order to support our community during COVID-19. A large chunk of the funds are going directly to single moms in the form of $1k checks, but it’s also going homeless shelters, and other non-profits in the area that are providing food and shelter. So I can feel both frustrated, disappointed, and also proud of my fellow-Christians at the same time.
Is the good enough to outweigh the bad? Is that a reasonable criteria? I sometimes rationalize some of the worst behavior that’s been done in the name of Christianity as “well, that doesn’t reflect real Christianity” but of course I would because I don’t share the same vision of Christianity that those people do. Or I might say “well, Christianity doesn’t say Christians will be better, in fact Jesus said it was the sick that need saving” but then it seems like if God was really moving the Church to be more Christ-like then we’d see some significant movement in that direction? Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don’t.
That seems like significant common ground amongst most people. We may attribute it to different things, but I think there can be a lot of good in the idea of needing to reach outside ourselves. I would maybe use the language of “common good” here. That we are connected to each other as humans, and to the world around us, and so we owe something to that “other” out there.