Scenario: you’ve been forced, by court order, to enroll in a group counseling program. This program is run by a private, for-profit company. During the process of your enrollment, an employee explains the program and gives you a small exhortation speech about “learning to do better”, “developing a plan for your life”, etc. In the process, she witnesses to you that “I realized that God had a plan for me. God has a plan for you, too!”.
Would you take this as a harmless statement, meant to uplift? Or would you be offended, as in “don’t preach to me!”?
(note to mods: My intent is to poll opinions. If this should be in GD please excuse me.)
I would be offended only in the tacet assumption of all such programs that they know something about God and his intentions that I don’t. If they’ve got some verifiable, more-recent-than-the-Bible Word o’ God, why the heck aren’t they on CNN?
I’d be annoyed …offended if it continued. But I’d probably let it pass, since I would think saying anything to the person in question would not make them change.
If it were a passing comment I’d probably just roll my eyes and move on. If she made it big part of the conselling, I’d be offended as I don’t believe the government should mandate I attend religious training.
That’s what I was thinking. And part of the reason I’m opposed to the government sending people to them. They ought to provide the option of non-higher power focused conselling…unfortunatly that is fequently not an option.
Being my snarky self I’d probably respond with something like:
True Believer: God loves you and has a plan for you. Cynical Optimist: He had a plan for Cain too, look how well that went.
I recently saw the Bullshit! episode where they discuss this very matter: Judges effectively giving you a choice between come to Jesus (it’s always Jesus) and meet your cellmate. No, no state-sponsored coersion there, why do you ask? :rolleyes:
I usually view such things as harmless. If it were much more obnoxious than you describe, I might be annoyed, but that statement alone would get a pass from me.
I’d roll my eyes, mock her silently, grin and bear it, then move on with my life.
Except recently I’ve had a series of bad news, and I am so sick of people telling me “God has a plan” and it “All happens for a reason” that I just told them point blank not to say those words to me. I don’t want to hear them.
“I have a better plan: doing the bare minimum for completing this court-mandated, faith-based preach-fest, then getting the hell away from you welfare-queen 'thumpers.”
I would assume that she’s an Evangelic or Jehova’s Witness and thank her politely. If she then proceeded to ask “do you read your Bible?” I’d proceed to inform her that yes, being a Catholic, I do. Evangelics like that answer and leave me alone with a smile, Jehova’s Witnesses hate it and leave me alone with much cursing.
The first time someone was told God had a plan for me was at my birth, while I was being washed… the matron told my mother “given all the crap this poor baby of yours has already survived, I have to believe she’s been born 'cos God has a plan for her. Mind you, she’s also probably going to be a real stubborn one.” Thirty-seven years and a degree in engineering later, I don’t know about plans but can certify the stubborn part.