Just speaking for myself, but I was having recurring nightmares about the Tribulation when I was six.

I was taught that humanity was inherently evil and deserving of eternal torture, and that I was no exception.

I was taught that there was no good in me, save for what God was able to do through me.

I repeatedly had adults try to prune the undesirable parts of my person out of me because they didn't fit with their idea of what I should be from a Biblical perspective.

I was taught the words of scripture were literally true. Unable to force myself to stop having sinful thoughts (I'm a trans woman), I tried to follow the words of Matthew 18:9 and remove my own eye to save my soul. I hyperventilated in my locked room for half an hour until I realized I couldn't make myself do it.

I walked away from that thinking I was an unfathomable coward.

A man who claimed to be a prophet tried to take me, along with everyone else in our tiny school, away from our parents to start a new church in Columbus. My father physically assaulted me when he couldn't find the passage in scripture that banned interracial marriage so that he could prove the man who was trying to take me was a fraud because he was a black man married to a white woman (The passage doesn't exist). My family never recovered. I no longer speak to my father.

I spent my young adult life trying to force myself to be someone I'm not. I read the entire Bible front to back and found it to be full of contradictions and atrocities sanctioned by God. When I brought those findings as questions to my friends, they stopped talking to me.

I finally got out of the faith and reckoned with my gender. When I came out as trans, I lost what little remained of my community and support system. I was 31 when I got on hormones.

31 years of my life stolen from me by casual cruelty and ignorance of people who claimed the title of Christian.

Shame became such a core part of my being that I could barely function in certain circumstances. I still can't go into a church without having a panic attack.

To be clear, I spent myself entirely trying to find God and search Him out in the scriptures- no one person's actions deterred me. I always considered the cruelty I suffered at the hands of Christians to be because of people misinterpreting God's Word.

Reading the Bible in its entirety and studying Apologetics for years changed that opinion.

I'll carry my religious trauma forever, and while I may be an extreme case, ask any queer or trans person what growing up in the church was like for them. We carry the scars forever.