Why Are There So Many Churches Yet So Much Evil?

I left church yesterday and I drove around my city to find a good breakfast spot.  I live in a city of 24,000 people.  My North Jackson, MS suburb is about 18 square miles.  However, as I drove from the east side of the city to the west side, I must have passed 6 or 7 churches.  I saw all of the vehicles parked outside of each church.

I started thinking about all of the churches in Jackson (population 170,000).  You can drive a 5 mile stretch in that city and easily see 10+ churches.  I'm not sure how it is in other parts of the country, but in the South, there are more churches than gas stations on every other corner.  I'm not saying that this is a bad thing.  If you refer back to my first sentence, I attend church, too.  However, what I'm wondering is how are there so many evil people in the world if so many people attend church?

That leads me to believe one of two things: either most of the people who attend churches are hypocrites or churches are not effective teaching its parishioners how to become better people.  Or maybe it's both, I don't know.  Either way, there's a problem somewhere.

No one is perfect.  We all sin, but the level of nastiness in some people these days is astonishing.  I've met some very nasty and petty people in my life who are at church every time it opens.  They sing praises on Sundays and mistreat people the rest of the week.  Adulterers, liars, racists, greedy CEO's, gossipers, abusers, etc.  The list goes on.  Yet, they clean up on Sundays and sit in church and shout "amen" to a way of life that they don't even attempt to follow.

And despite the fact that so many of them know their holy scriptures like the back of their hand, for some reason, it doesn't apply to them.  You can't tell them that they're doing anything wrong without backlash

.  After all, only God can judge you, right?  Good luck with that when you meet Him.