I very rarely get this, although I suspect if I lived elsewhere my experience might be different. Interestingly enough, I get it most often from my primary care physician, who usually signs off on his emails with it. I’m almost 100% sure that he’s Muslim. He’s also a terrific doctor and I hope he continues practicing long enough that I never have to find a new one.
It doesn’t normally bother me when I do hear it, because I understand that I am being wished good fortune in possibly the best way the wisher knows how. I’ll take that, even if I don’t agree with their Magical Teapot belief, because IMO, we could all use as much positivity as we can get. Sometimes, especially in the last few years, when I’m feeling a little snarky, I may respond with, “Have the kind of day for which you voted”, but I rarely want to stir the pot when somebody is just feeling charitable toward me. I reserve the snark for when I’m certain they’re not only projecting but imposing their belief system on me.
As for sneezing, I grew up saying “geshundheit”. I am not German. Neither of my parents are German, not by a long shot. Yet we always said “geshundheit” when somebody sneezed. I was probably 15 or 16 before I realized it was a German word, and 20 before I knew what it meant. The first time my wife’s mother - who was born and raised in Germany - heard me say it after somebody sneezed, she remarked with pride, “Oh, I see [my daughter] has already trained you.” I think I let her have the win, but I don’t remember.
And that’s the problem. It’s not just one. I’ve had several over the years with this exact same mindset. HVAC maintenance, internet service repair, handyman, pest exterminator, off the top of my head. It’s creepy as hell.
Quite the opposite. I look at what’s in front of me, which is simply a person wishing me a good day, using the word “blessed” which barely even registers on the religiosity meter.
What do you do when someone says “thank God it didn’t rain?” Or “swear to God I didn’t do it?” Do you brush it off as a figure of speech or do you get mad about being prosyletized?
What if they’re literally praying to God about these things? That’s their business. As long as they don’t make it mine, why should I care? Sure, thank God you found a good parking space. If that’s what religion means to you, whatever floats your boat.
I’m as atheist as they come, but this seems unhinged to me. Maybe instead of policing other people’s speech you’d do better to smile politely and move on.
Heh. A previous co-worker would do those serial sneezes. She was in the next cubical over. So I would email her -
gesundheit, gesundheit, gesundheit, gesundheit, gesundheit, gesundheit
Never heard of that, but I like it. (To be used with caution, of course.)
Those seem qualitatively different to me from ‘have a blessed day’. They are comments, rather than instructions (as the latter is). Thus they are not intrusive.
I did not say it was making people more religious. I said evangelizing is on the rise. That indicates nothing about its effectiveness, or how many (or few) people are engaging in it.
If you go back around a century, the level of casual, everyday, default racism and sexism is staggering, as is the realization that it was also normally never questioned (with a few exceptions, predominately blacks and women for some strange reason).
Religion, meaning Christianity, was treated in the same way. It’s presence was casual, everyday, and the default everywhere. With the possible exception of the New York City area, with its extraordinary percentage of Jews. Of course, these were days when Columbia University wouldn’t accept Jews, so maybe not so much. They instead created Seth Low Junior College, as “one of Columbia’s many attempts to deal with a changing student population that they felt was contaminating its pristine, Protestant campus.” Casual sometimes meant in-your-face. Yes, fundamentalist Christianity was hitting a low point - the Scopes trial was exactly 100 years ago - yet the political power of the Klan was at its peak, with the majority of its members outside the South.
And the language used to excuse racism and sexism to this day is uncannily similar to what’s being heard in this thread. “They mean well.” “It’s just an expression.” “You aren’t being treated differently.” “Other people do it.” I expect any post now to have a subtly hidden “well, you’re one of the good ones” woven through it. This is perhaps the one thread on the Dope to pretend we aren’t living under Trump. If anyone thinks that’s a separate subject…
I get what you’re saying. But using “blessed” feels less like a neutral figure of speech than “thank god” or “goddammit”. It feels like being proselytized to. Or just ooky. Maybe if one hears it enough it feels more normal.
“Have a nice day” is also an instruction. Now that I think of it, people do get bowed up about that – “Don’t tell me what kind of day to have!”
Which to me seems to come from the same mindset as irritation over “Have a blessed day.” It’s not actually a command! Nobody really cares if you have a nice day, or if Jesus actually visits you with an armload of blessings. Most pleasantries are mindless. Some of them will be mildly religious because our language has some religious influences. That’s all it is.
What are they asking of you, or telling you to do, or intruding into? To me, if they’re not doing that, it’s not proselytizing. Just the mere act of someone using their own religious idioms in your presence isn’t doing any of that.
Thinking on it further, it makes me wonder - do people actually understand that “have a blessed day” means only “I hope some blessings come into your day?” It’s not commanding you to conduct your day in a godly manner or whatever. It’s just nice wishes.
“Have a blessed day” is a wish that the recipient have a good day. While it may have a basis in the idea of a supreme being looking over us it’s hardly a request to believe it. It should be accepted in the spirit it was given.
There are people in the world who don’t want you to have a nice day. Those are the people you should worry about.
I made my precise parameters clear in my initial post:
Precisely, it is an opinion offered here in IMHO, borne of a lifetime of observation, within my own experience. It is empirical in nature. I am not arguing that there are more evangelists or fewer, nor am I offering an opinion on how successful or unsuccessful their practice of evangelizing is. However, within my personal observation and experience, I see people evangelizing far more often than I used to. There may be fewer who are just more “in your face,” or there may be more of them than there used to be. No idea.
Stated another way, It doesn’t mean there are more people doing it. It means I see more people doing it than I used to. Whether that means there are fewer evangelicals engaging in it more loudly and more often because they are now emboldened by examples and practices set at the current highest levels of government, or there are now more evangelicals engaging in it, I don’t know. I am not offering an opinion on that.
Well said. Religion, and by that I mean conservative Christianity has been slowly creeping into our culture and discourse. I don’t like it, I don’t have to like it, and no one gets to lecture me how I should feel about it. It’s pretty condescending.
That’s still not a command, demand, or instruction! Not in the slightest! It’s just “I hope God does nice things for you today.”
I will say that I can empathize with the feeling when people get over-religous around me. A co-worker of mine refers to God as “My Lord.” This makes me feel “ooky” as you phrased it, in ways that I can’t explain.
But that’s just her talking about her own inner life in her own personal idiom. She’s allowed to do that, I’m allowed to avoid her. Everyone doesn’t need to suit me.
Thank you, @Sylvanz. You said it with far fewer words than I did!
No question, lots of people can say, “Have a blessed day!” and have no agenda about it whatsoever. When they say it to others who share their beliefs, that’s lovely. When they say it to family members, perfectly fine. When they say it to me, a person they’ve never met, I question their motives in our current political climate. It is one that encourages militant Christianity at most, if not all, levels of society and government.
I do think it’s different depending on where one lives. Oregon is an odd state with respect to religion. On one hand, it is the least religious state in the Union, at least last time I checked. On the other hand, the eastern half of the state in particular is heavily influenced both by MAGA and evangelical religions of several different sorts that have already made significant inroads into the population of the State of Idaho. This bleeds into the rural areas of the western part of Oregon. It’s how we have both Portland and Malheur County – regions that could not be more diametrically opposed in terms of their politics and views on religion. Confrontation is brewing here, especially in the more rural areas. And that may be one of the reasons I see the more in-your-face sort of evangelizing than others who have posted in this thread.
To be clear, this is just speculation on my part, based on what I’ve observed over more than 20 years of living here. I used to be comfortable living here as an atheist. Now, not so much.