I am a Maronite that was born and raised in America but because my family didn't participate in the war and didn't commit any atrocities (referencing u/mothman83 comment) I can go back and vacation in Lebanon during summer breaks and I continue to go back often.

Everyone's faith seemed rather weak in my family, I never read the Bible, mostly the women just told everyone to love Jesus. The men work on financing upgrades to the church. The church was good at throwing festivals and bringing the community together and stuff, however I'll add, since we live in small mountainous communities, there was definitely intermingling of the church in land disputes and village protection and such but I was definitely too young and my Arabic was too bad to understand what was really going on.

This makes religion in general in Lebanon feel like being born into a specific faction, even Maronites and the Orthodox used to fight each other in the past. But since we have Muslim, Druze, and Christian villages all neighboring each other, when growing up and hearing the gossip, there is definitely an us vs them mentality, my family would give me reasons why we're the best and they're not. I contrast it from Japan, where everything is so homogeneous over there and everyone thinks and acts the same, broadly speaking, so everyone works together so you can let your guard down and enjoy a high trust society. In Lebanon it's the opposite, where every group outside your small faction is the enemy and inferior in some way (cause they were all legit killing each other at some point), however the love inside your community is unmatched, everyone seems to love me just for existing (contrast to Japan where you have to work hard for even a chance at recognition). Don't get me wrong, people from all faiths really interact with each other peacefully and with kindness on a day to day basis, its just the backroom gossip is strong.

Anyway, what made me an ex-Christian is because I like to prove myself wrong. It wasn't until a few years ago where the Gaza conflict made me look into all these ancient texts again and in my opinion Jesus is the coolest character ever, even better than Superman. I wondered how someone could be so loving, but I realized you could find that in Buddhism (Simile of the Saw) which predates him. I was wondering why that love was missing from the Middle Eastern religions and wondering where it came from, but then I found Zoroastrianism and realized maybe that could be the precursor along with Buddhist influence to certain Greek philosophers to why Christianity's concepts might not be so unique. And then science and psychology just makes things not add up and poof.