Most communities use fear of pain, to motivate people and some add ideology or other distractions. Christianity (as defined as what I believe the Bible says, which everyone says that is what they believe too, while we have completely different positions on most theological points) is all based on our choices plus divine intervention.
Essentially, God saves us from ourselves, but we have to genuinely change in our decisions, out of gratitude, because of God’s forgiveness of us. We then complete the process, in our actions, to prove to ourselves and others that we are legitimate Christians.
So the big difference between American culture / Hollywood and Christianity is that the values of Christianity are kindness and humility, while American culture values strength and beauty. Unfortunately, many in the Church in America hate anything new, because they’re afraid of new things, because they don’t understand them. They see major changes happening that they have no control over that keep their families away from Christianity.
The problem becomes that they want simple answers and those answers are about emphasizing the rationality and rules based religion of the Puritans. This reaction against contemporary culture, art, and beauty adds things to Christianity that are not required by God. This approach sounds eerily similar to Christ’s criticism of the Pharisees.
People have to choose between being happy and being right with God. This creates what many would call a toxic culture. Instead of trying to be as different as possible from who they perceive as their enemies, they should find commonality with them.
We should collaborate on issues we have in common like anti-consumerism and humanitarianism. Many churches just try to avoid anything that is controversial, sometimes in very subtle ways. Some churches claim they just believe what the Bible says, which is a non-answer, as even scholars of the same denomination disagree on most theology. Why do so many identify as evangelicals and yet they don’t go to the same denomination?