i grew up most of my life living w my (nonbio, dads adoptive) grandparents bc i had a really rough beginning with a lot, my mom was christian but she never really talked about it or acted like it, i just remember a vague memory of her talking to me about god two separate occasions. my grandpa was the pastor to the church i lived next to (retired recently, something rare to see ive been told), but i still felt like i had a choice to be christian or not. it was a baptist church in a small town but its one of the oldest founded (theres i guess some weird stuff with some baptist churches being completely different from each other ignoring the bible completely idk) but i would wholeheartedly say i trusted my grandfather down to my core, and he definitely lives the life he tries to guide others to. ive been living on my own away from him for two years and i could totally choose to drift away or do my own thing but i truly believe. my grandfather is one of the best pastors i know of. it wasnt peer pressure growing up that "made" me christian, and i feel it was easier to guide me through making myself a better one. my girlfriend is catholic, but she believes the same founding principles i do. from my experience some catholics can be more "radical" than others, such as straight up worshipping mary or just going through so many loopholes to avoid speaking to god yourself. when ive rejected god through my bratty teen years ive had to struggle so much more alone and i still have scars all along my left wrist to shoulder a decade later. adjustment disorder years after my moms suicide, struggling to choose either not to get addicted to my adderall while it ruins my appetite nearly making me anorexic or failing so many classes because my mind goes completely blank no matter how much i genuinely want to make a single clear thought pass through my head, abusing weed to the point of disassociation and picked up smoking vapes and cigarettes. if anyone has the right to hate god, i should plenty have that right for the childhood i had to grow up watching my mother shoot up needles and abuse pills and all drugs under the sun until she chose to kill herself in her sleep when i was ten, a violent schizophrenic bipolar drunken father who continued the cycle of abuse from his (bio) parents onto his own family whom i rarely contact but still cry when i hear he thinks i hate him, living homeless for two years, living with a druglord in the ghetto of jersey who was pimping my own mom out to supply her with more drugs while my dad was in a hospital states away (he ended up getting two purple hearts), being kidnapped, plenty more and not all im comfortable sharing to people i dont know well. hope these examples are plenty for you all to grasp what ive went through. it doesnt mean you wont struggle either as a christian, but theres a certain peace and comprehension youre given you have to experience to understand. happiness is not a deserved earned right if you do nothing with yourself and i had to learn that the hard way. if you dont put effort towards a relationship with god, a commitment to yourself and to others around you, your life will fall into entropy and you will lose yourself to your "self righteous" wrath believing the whole world is out to get you like my father had made an example of.