I think part of it is that we’re just having wildly different cultural experiences between denominations or sects. As an example, I went to Christian private school and remember feeling like I was in a cult, the members within it very seriously believed that God was going to return and raise people from the dead then cast sinners to hell for eternity. Straight face, complete seriousness, it’s not a joke, it’s eternity.

Much later in life, as an adult, I recognized it’s morality isn’t exactly bad, and I now more so associate Christianity with marriage and family life in Europe and the Americas. I also associate Christianity with providing grace to people who haven’t lived the based life, as in, I think it frequently holds the philosophy that people can still have self improvement in their lives after previously failing.

I was looking at churches recently in Europe, and some of the churches are so beautiful. They look very enjoyable to attend. They look like very happy and healthy communities. This is in contrast to to my experiences, where I associate a church with the most mundane, boring, and uninspiring building in a place like Utah while a guy at a podium lectures me for 2 hours why I’m a horrible person and likely to burn in hell for eternity.

I think if I had grown up in the beautiful European church, in a good denomination, without the cult, and a group of intelligent good friends that also associated with it, my appreciation for Christianity might have been different earlier in life. I don’t know, I associate Christianity too much with hell fire for eternity, so I don’t know if my world view could have been different. I wish my parents had been atheists who took me to a not-so-serious church so I could have had that perspective instead.