Is truth relative to action?

Recently, I was reading a book and came across one of those things that drives me crazy.
A guy was talking about why he was not a Christian, and his reason was "at the end of the day, the Christian church has no coherent answer for earth care. And for that reason I now know I could never be a Christian."

Now, I can accept people choosing not to be a Christian (I do believe in free will, after all). I can respect and accept people whose faith - and it is faith - says there is no God, or there is a God but he doesn't care about how you worship Him, or there is a God but he simply set the world in motion and has better things to do than care about us puny individuals.
I can accept people who believe that I'm wrong in my understanding of God, who believe in Allah or Buddha or whatever they call their deity - or people who take an ' all of the above' approach.
I can even accept people whose faith says there is nothing there.
What I have a hard time accepting is people who decide they don't believe in something simply because they don't see followers of that "something" agreeing with their particular point of view.
Isn't that like saying "I don't believe in math because all the mathematicians I know can't take a joke?"
Or "I don't believe in medicine because I some doctors have killed people?"
Don't get me wrong: I do understand that the behavior of the people who profess to follow a certain 'truth' does indeed affect non-believers. That's why it is a great responsibility to try to live in a way that attracts, not repels people. After all, Peter (in 1 Peter) did write that we're to live a life among non-believers in such a way that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they see your good deeds (Chapter 2, verse 12).

But you can't please everybody. All believers have flaws, whether it's people who call themselves Christians or mathematicians or doctors or followers of Islam or the people who believe in the power of crystals (as opposed to the power of Krystals, which I do happen to believe in).

It seems to me that if something is the truth, then that should be all that matters. If two plus two equals four, then the fact that the person teaching me that may have no sense of humor, wears a plastic pocket protector, and is just disagreeable can't change the essential truth that two plus two does indeed equal four.
If Allah is indeed God, then all the bombs and oppression of women and rejection of human rights in the world can't change that.
And if Christianity is right, then the fact that the church has not taken a strong enough position on - in the above case - the environment to suit some people can't change that.

I wonder if we, as a society or culture, have become so high-maintenance that "truth" has to cater to our most deeply held interests. How did we come to be people who just reject anything that doesn't reflect our own personal interest (from the ecology to on-line gaming) because it doesn't reinforce what I want?

I blame cable TV.
There was a time when you got three channels, plus PBS that always came in a bit fuzzy. You watched what the networks gave you to watch, or you didn't watch at all. And it was amazing how often you learned to like a certain show because there was nothing else on, or you were educated about some topic because that show was the least objectionable on TV at the time.
But then came cable, and suddenly if one network wasn't giving you what you wanted to watch, you could scan 999 channels to find the network that did - even if it was a re-run of an old show.
Then came VCRs and "On Demand." If a new show doesn't appeal to you in the first five or ten minutes, you don't have to give it a chance; you simply find something else to watch during that time slot.

I fear that's how we've begun to approach all of life. If we hear something that we don't like, we change the channel to dial in to find whatever "truth" pleases us.
In so doing, we risk not hearing what really is true.
And simply not knowing.

If you don't believe something, make sure it's because you honestly don't believe it to be true, not just because it's not what you want to hear.