1. Getting a reputation as an angry, bitter person. I felt that way because my father would fly into rages, scream and hit me.

2. Not being mentally able to forgive people who had hurt me and didn’t care. This was a problem because of Matthew 6:14-15.

3. Being treated with contempt by a Christian friend when it came out that someone in my family was in a same-sex relationship.

4. Cringing when people gave their testimonies before they got baptised but not being sure why I felt weird about it.

5. My Christian friend who believes the world is 7000 years old and that women should not preach but also believed it was okay to have sex with her boyfriend because they’re “destined for marriage”.

6. You can’t prove or disprove if someone is a Christian yet the “you’re not a true Christian!” accusations fly anyway. Apparently you’re not a true Christian for feeling neutral about same-sex marriage being legalised.

7. My father was vehemently against divorce. My sister separated from her husband. Dad said he prayed about it and found a loophole in the Bible that allows divorce not to be a sin. #convenient

8. The church I attended was more of a social club. A social club that forgets about you as soon as you stop going after 20 years of attendance.

9. Hearing people say, ‘Isn’t God good?’ in gratitude for getting new jobs at “just the right time” while I attempted for the tenth time to leave a shitty workplace.

10. Despite talks of improving the youth and young adults ministries at my church, they never improved.

11. My husband used to fall asleep in the Bible study I ran. #FloggingADeadHorse

12. Christian geeks who complain about Jeremiah 29:11 being taken out of context but completely dismiss the context argument when it comes to 1 Timothy 2:12 or other passages about the role of women.

13. That time my dad held his Bible over his head threatening to hit me because I didn’t want to be at church. That shit sticks with you.

14. The cognitive dissonance of wanting to be a “light to the world” but having no desire to evangelise.

15. If you don’t take Genesis literally, you are not a true Christian!

16. Hearing my Christian friends make fun of my dad. You’re probably getting the impression he was a butthole at times. I used to mention him in prayer requests because he made me cry.

17. Feeling alienated from my non-Christian peers as a child because Dad would evangelise to their parents while we were playing together.

18. Feeling like something was wrong with me because I couldn’t feel God’s spirit during worship. The “spirit” probably doesn’t exist.

19. Speaking in tongues looks and sounds like psychosis.

20. If you get a tattoo, you are not a true Christian!

21. A Christian colleague – who had a new girlfriend every month – said that believing same-sex marriage to be okay was compromising the word of God.

22. My father converted to Christianity within a cult.

23. My parents met within that same cult.

24. My uncle and aunt – and their 8 children – still belong to that cult and show no signs of leaving.

25. Listening to the guys in my Bible study talk about their low self-esteem and tendency to watch porn when upset and concluding that they needed to trust God more. What they really needed was a therapist.

26. Christian teachers at Christian schools with Christian students. #LightOfTheWorld #SaltOfTheEarth

27. Romans 9 (God elects people to go to hell). Reading it for the first time was like slipping on a banana peel.

28. Seeing the social skills of my home-schooled peers in action. At least I knew there were people who had it worse than me.

29. At a youth rally I attended, the preacher made fun of atheists, pretending to be one. He used a silly voice and said, ‘I know God doesn’t exist, I’ve read this book about it!’ Change the word doesn’t to does and that impersonation can be applied to Christians even more aptly.

30. Hearing the words “no church is perfect”. They could damn well start taking some steps in that general direction.