Where's the Christ in Christianity?

Who took the Christ out of Christianity? I'm so tired of seeing the people that I worship with following a brand of Christianity that is so full of hatred and judgment that I can't find even a hint of Jesus in it. I know many of them depend on their pastors and leaders instead of searching the scriptures to know which teachings are true, but how did the pastors and leaders get so far from the path of righteousness? When did they forget the basic truths of the Bible? The basic truths of history?

1. The Biblical law was written to separate God's people from the rest of the world. Nowhere do we see the people of Israel imposing their law on neighboring peoples. We only see them obeying God's law in whatever place they were. We don't see them destroying temples to foreign gods or even fighting against the practices of human sacrifice and temple prostitution. They accepted that there were people in the world who had different (wrong) beliefs and value systems and they gave witness through the way they lived their own lives and through the way their God took care of them. They were proud to be the people chosen to receive the law and they tried to keep it.

2. Christ came into the world to save sinners. He told his disciples that the way to heaven was to believe in his sacrifice and to live so as to show the world that they believe. They were taught to share what they had with whoever needed it, to sacrifice their own wants for the greater good of the Kingdom of God, and to love God and one another. They were told to share the good news about Jesus with the people they came into contact with and to love them enough to make it real to them.

3. Jesus broke some of the traditional Jewish laws because they went against the principle of love that he taught. He healed on the Sabbath and forgave a woman caught in adultery because it was the right thing to do under the principle of love. That's how he set an example.

4. The early church had issues with church discipline that are being taken out of context and totally misread. The problem was not that there were unbelievers doing unspeakable things, the problem was that there were believers behaving just like unbelievers. The church leaders were instructed to remove these people from positions of power in the church and to separate them completely if they didn't respond well to correction. Nowhere are we told to "correct" unbelievers or to judge those who are not at least pretending to be Christians.

So why do people call themselves Christian if they are going to ignore the guiding principle of Christ? If we love God and the people He created, why are we so quick to condemn and so slow to show love?  If we believe that non-repentant sinners will be judged by God, why are we so anxious to judge them ourselves?

Where do we get the idea that we must match our secular laws to God's old testament laws? Hasn't God always expected His people to go above and beyond the secular law?  Don't we expect believers to be set apart and live under different rules? The Bible says "Don't conform to the things of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of the Spirit." If we aren't supposed to conform to their ways, why would we think they should conform to ours?

I don't believe it is right to end any life, but the whole abortion argument has gotten entirely out of hand.

And where did the idea that America is supposed to be a Christian nation come from? America is not and never has been a Christian nation. There may have been more believers at some time in the past, but the fact that our founding fathers included a check on the government that makes it unconstitutional to set up any state religion would suggest that no religion can lay claim. We do not have a state religion. We do not want a state religion. State religions don't work. If we are not free to not believe, we are not free to believe either.

Get rid of the persecution complex. It's not like we are being ordered  to pray to Nebuchadnezzar.
We're being told to let unbelievers behave as unbelievers and to let our own lives be different enough that people notice. That's pretty much what God told the Israelites, isn't it? That's sort of what Jesus told the disciples and what they taught the early church. Why is it so hard for us?