I see where he’s coming from.
It would be easy to lose faith in God if it were based on faith in people.
Yes, faith in God through the Lord Jesus Christ is independent of how the American people so often behave.
Which is precisely what he has done. People let him down, not God, but he has turned his back on God and placed his faith in humanity. His own words.
Jesus told us we would have trouble in this world. We were never promised a world where innocent babies are never stillborn, or born completely normal. Good, faithful people are not being punished with a tragedy, nor is anyone exempt from such a tragedy. My family has personally lost eight babies to miscarriage or premature birth.
As for the man who beats his wife, he should have been disciplined and then educated by the church. And if that didn’t work, put out of the church. The failure is his, not God’s.
/// “It would be easy to lose faith in God if it were based on faith in people.” ///
The bar to being a Christian is very low: acknowledgement that indeed you are a sinner, is part of it. The Church is composed of sinners, albeit sinners who are striving for better.
Neither I, nor any other Christians, are surprised when members go astray, sometimes in big ways. Disappointed, for sure, but never surprised.
His faith wasn’t in God. It was in people. Then he was appalled to find that God has Free Will.
He was preaching the Prosperity type Gospel. If you do “good” things, God is obligated to do good things for you. In short, you can manipulate God with your actions. God is under your control.
It doesn’t work that way. God is not your employee and you can’t fire Him for non-performance.
My first response when I encounter such people is to ask then how Christianity could have had the growth it did in the first centuries, in a world of dark barbarism , in a world without recourse to drugs, anesthetics, and other accoutrements of modern medicine. The Roman world was filled with pagan Gods who could not speak or answer, why did so many embrace Christ in that era, rejecting the old myths?