It hearkens back to not only what I [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=229244|posted above] but also the article linked at the top of the thread. Your experience mirrors my own: a distressingly large number of people think that 'becoming a Christian' absolves them of responsibility. Not true. But a very large number of people in the US have been taught that it does for at least a generation, probably longer, thus giving rise to the teaching like the Prosperity Gospel, and forms of selfishness and self-centredness that you observe.

Christian entertainer and satirist [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Taylor|Steve Taylor] wrote a song about the insular "Christian" communities and how they shut themselves away from the secular world. It's called Guilty By Association. It mocks and derides the type of thinking that stops church-goers from discovering that non-church-goers and athiests can be more moral, more compassionate and less hedonistic than themselves.

The ills of the visible US church are known. That you identify all Christians with their errant teaching is unfortunate, but not unsurprising.

Wade.