This is a rather heavy subject, but I feel it needs to be addressed, because people are not talking about Christianity being a trigger for some.
My mother and I were at the county fair once, when I was in my late teens, and as we made our way to the parking lot to go home, a man in an expensive-looking suit, with the cheesiest, oiliest salesman's voice I have ever heard, approached us in the crowd.
"Hey ladies, would you care for some stimulus money? It's totally worthless, but there's a really cool gospel message on the underside," he said slickly.
"No, thank you," I said quietly, shaking my head and looking down at the ground.
"We're saved!" my mother laughed, before he could respond.
"Oh, thank God!" he exclaimed, instantly moving on the someone else.
Why had I been so quiet, looking down at the ground? Because the thought of even looking any more at that cartoon Obama made me want to cry. I couldn't even accept it from him and then throw it away, because it brought back too many painful memories. I was extremely lucky that though my mother struggled with such pain too, she was apparently strong enough to fake a certainty which we both no longer had.
I went to a conservative evangelical school as a child, and later was homeschooled with curriculum bought from that same school. The school taught me that JOY stood for "Jesus, Others, You," but judging by that standard, most of the teachers did not put Jesus first. It was not overly strict, but its constant emphasis on sin and hell made me pray often that God would not let me die if I had sins that I did not yet know about, and therefore couldn't repent from.
I did accept Christ as my Savior at an early age, and later realized that I was "supposed" to be assured of my salvation, since I know I had been sincere and Jesus paid the penalty. But I still felt like I was constantly disappointing God. I tried so hard to be a good Christian; to pray long hours; to study my bible every day; to witness to others; and to constantly talk to God in my head and never have a bad thought (that one was the most exhausting by far). And I obviously wasn't measuring up, because why else didn't I ever feel close to God?
All of this finally came to a head when I was going through an especially chaotic time in my life, around age fifteen. I begged God to show me that he was real, so that I could continue to believe in him. Or at least to show me that everything was going to be all right. Where was the "peace that passes all understanding"? What was I doing wrong, that I didn't have it? I had tried so hard over the years, and had gotten saved and rededicated my life to Christ so many times.
I'm sure you can guess what happened. For a long time I felt numb, and any mention of Christianity literally drove me to have a panic attack, or nearly so. If I saw a Christian book in a thrift shop, I had to leave the books section, quickly. If I bought a book that turned out to be Christian, by mistake, I threw it away from me as if it had burned me, and later had to throw it in the garbage or get it out of the house, quickly.
For all intents and purposes, I was much like a "demon." I had certainly been taught that an aversion to Christianity was an indication of evil. And that didn't help my self-image.
It was only years later that I could stand to even think about Christianity at all, much less write about it. It still makes me want to cry sometimes, to think deeply of my "failure" to be a Christian and the terrible way my religious upbringing made me feel about myself.
Yes, I have been hurt by Christians, and certain forms of evangelical Christianity (which every evangelical Christian reader will probably, sadly, interpret as someone else's tradition). I try to be honest about that, wherever it leads me. And to some people, that will only "prove" that I'm whatever I am now (though sometimes I don't even know) because I hate God.
And yet the same people who say that we must forgive everybody (regardless of whether they repent or not), believe that hurt is always and automatically followed by hate.
And the same people who say that "it's not a religion, it's a relationship," believe that "God" is the same exact thing as "Christianity" or "religion." Or at least, they think that I have grown up in Christianity, and would still be stupid enough to conflate the two.
I don't blame God for what happened. But I've used up my last little bit of faith trying to believe, and be a good Christian, and I've learned the hard way that that is sometimes simply not enough. And that for whatever reason, God didn't or couldn't help me to believe. Whatever relationship I have with God, if such a being exists, is now up to God, not me.
And I don't necessarily think, especially now, that I am far away from God, if God exists. But it still hurts to be condemned for being hurt, and wanting that hurt out of my life--as I know some would do, if they knew this about me.
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