On being a Christian

It interests me to note that atheists get away with a, frankly, disturbing level of double-standards. For example, whilst researching for my EPQ (on Christianity) I noticed that a lot of comment threads were full of atheists abusing Christians, calling them (or shall I say, us) a myriad of unpleasant things, such as brainless, incapable of logical thought, blind. Now, as I understand it, many atheists think that Christians are hypocrites and whilst I agree that some are, and all will at one time or another slip up, I don't understand how someone can sit and generically accuse Christians of hypocrisy, then write things like that whilst maintaining their view that it's only right that Christians respect their right to believe whatever they want. See the problem?
As a Christian myself I have noticed that it involves putting up with a lot of hurtful comments and reactions; you invite someone to a Christian event and they scoff, your friends say things like 'Jesus!' when something bad happens and you know that if you ask them not to they probably won't appreciate just how much it bothers you. However, I would like to add that part of the 'Christian thing' is persecution and people not understanding you. Jesus said so himself. I think that being a Christian in this country has been very easy up to now; after all Christianity was the automatic religion of everyone who didn't believe otherwise. Up until fairly recently, and still now I notice, people were Christians because they'd been baptised, or their parents said they were or they went to Church occasionally. So maybe it's a good thing that it's getting harder to be a Christian; it means people are thinking about what they believe, so increasingly only those who have embraced true Christianity are calling themselves followers of Christ, which can only be a good thing.
On that note, I have one more point. A friend recently referred to me as 'passionate' about my Christianity, I don't think you can have 'impassionate' Christians. What's the point if it doesn't fill your heart and overflow into your life?
Food for thought :)