"Abstaining from bad things does not make you radical and it does not make you transformational; the only thing it does is make you a snob. "

I think you are right.  I totally remember being told, that I was "being watched everywhere I went, by everyone,"  and that "non-Christians were watching me constantly to decide whether Jesus was worth following.and whether or not I believed by a demonstration of my witness in everything"

I never thought about it at the time, but that is a whole lot of pressure to heap onto a 16 year-old.  I mean it's bad enough just to be a teenager with all of the pressures and guilt and shame and disappointments and frustrations (half the time you are praying that no one "saw that," but then you are telling the 16 year old, "yeah, well now we are going to put a magnifying glass on you and watch everything you do, and not just us...  EVERYONE"

So what does an enterprising teenager do that wants to make everyone happy and who wants to feel good around church adults, they begin to create a Christian personality separate from their own.  

This is how it starts, and usually by the time they are adults, they have a classic split personality that goes unnoticed by most Physiological practitioners because, the "patient" is full-aware of it, and is using their condition as a coping mechanism, and it seems to work pretty good for them, until they begin to value things like "authenticity" and "transparency" -- then they have a problem.