The advice that "if you're going through Hell, keep going."
Sometimes life sticks you some unpleasant business, and I figure you can either stay where you are, being miserable about it, bemoaning your fate and thinking how unfair everything is, or how you can't handle it, or you can suck it up...
In your experience, is this curiosity benign or malevolent? Do you take offense at being asked about your beliefs, or do they generally ask out of genuine curiosity? I've seen both varieties of questions and wondered which you thought was more often the case.
The way I grew up, if you weren't a Protestant, you were going to hell, that was that. Outside of that sheltered life, though, I've not encountered anyone really being an *** about religion or the lack thereof, not to me personally, anyway, I know it happens. Except my parents, who are LDS...
Grew up very Christian (non-denominational), homeschooled with a church group, then private religious school...now, eh, not sure. I went through a period of strong agnosticism, I suppose in many ways I still am, except that I've come around to religion more, because I'm very into comparative...