Why I left the church...

It was Sunday. I went to church and I had a pretty good time. The music was my style of worship. The message introduced me to new qualities about Jesus. The people were friendly.
I took communion and we were dismissed.

I got in the car and began to leave. I approached the stop sign. I looked left on the divided highway. My lane was clear and BOOM.
There was a car in front of me and I hit it. For the first time in my life, I was in a car accident. At church. In the parking lot.
The vehicle pulled next to the curb, and I followed. The man got out of his car with an angry look on his face. I got out of the car and began to apologize. The angry man and his angry wife began to yell things that made it seem like they thought I had intended to hit their back bumper and cause an insignificant amount of damage to it and a more significant amount of damage to the car I was driving. I continued to apologize. I had never been in a traffic accident before.
The words I heard from them so contradicted the message I had heard inside the church. I am not a person who has weak faith. My belief in Jesus is not based on the actions that people claiming His name have performed. My belief in Jesus is rooted in HIS actions in life and the very real way HE influences my life. I am "All-in" in my belief in Jesus.
However, in this experience, there was definitely a part of me that says what if you had inserted another person into my shoes in this scenario. Instead of me, insert just a random young adult and their spouse who were just exploring faith or maybe this was their first time in church in a very long time.
A lot of people begin to follow Jesus through people that follow Him. A lot of people place a heavy significance on who God is by what the people claiming His name do.
I could easily see someone who was put in my shoes, in the immediate moments following the car accident, never enter a church again. Years later, someone would invite them to church and they would reference THIS STORY and say that is WHY I LEFT THE CHURCH. I could even go as far as to say a person could have potentially lost all of their faith in God, because of that moment. You could say they didn't have faith to begin with, but I don't think it is that simple.
I'd never been in a car accident before, so I have never been on the other side of the car accident, the side of people who got hit. I don't know if their immediate reaction to me hitting their car represented who they were as people. I don't know how I would have reacted had I been on the other side. Would I have been angry? Sad? Would I have been able to show compassion knowing I had just been inconvenienced on a Sunday afternoon and that the law was clearly on my side?   
They could be amazing people. They could be the strongest of Christ followers, but in that moment after I hit them, they failed to represent the Creator that they were at church to worship. I'm in no way saying that they should have turned their front bumper to me and tell me to ram that as well and then leave without justice, but in knowing that I was at fault and that they were going to be vindicated, their response certainly didn't represent the Jesus I know. If we're living by the Spirit, we should be "All-in" to live that way-- even when we've been rear-ended (both LITERALLY and metaphorically).
Luckily for a hypothetical person put in my shoes that day, the story didn't end there.
To be continued...