I do get a glimmer of what booklover is talking about, I think. Let me expound.
First, my own background:
My parents tried to raise me as a charismatic fundamentalist–Holy Roller is the impolite term–but it didn’t take. In my teens, I was a rabid atheist but that mellowed over the years to agnostic and later to autarchist. (‘Autarchist’ may be defined, for these purposes, as someone who believes in a spiritual something but also believes that that belief is his own business, not to be shared, not to be formed into an organization.)
I have spent most of my life searching for meaning, in both rational and spiritual directions. I’ve studied and discussed and experienced and once spent several weeks sitting in the woods and just thinking. Truly.
Having now reached a point which makes me happy and where the expressed beliefs of others neither threaten nor offend me, I’m usually able react favorably to good wishes from others.
I’m also suddenly reminded of the dedication to Vonnegut’s novel [und]Cat’s Cradle[/und]: May you believe in whatever pack of lies make you healthy and happy and kind.
HOWEVER:
A couple years ago, I accompanied a friend, out of friendship, to her Sunday morning services at the Christian Reformed Church. The CRC is the American version of the Dutch Reformed Church, Calvinist but not extreme.
As I was sitting in this church, listening to the sermon and watching the people around me, the thing that struck me the strongest was how proud of themselves they all felt. Others might stay at home or go to some other church but they, THEY were the ones with the direct line to God and the others were poor sinners, soon to be lost to eternal damnation.
The feeling of self-righteousness was so thick you could cut it. The overall effect to an outsider could easily be both patronizing and offensive. I was polite enough when discussing it with my friend…but I found it very sad indeed.
THEREFORE:
I really do believe that when someone gives you a gratuitous “God Bless you,” they are NOT genuinely wishing you well but actually proudly displaying their piety and asking you to be impressed with it. In other words, unsolicited comments with a religious note are for the benefit of the one speaking. The women to which booklover refers are attempting to make themselves feel happy and secure by patronizing him, putting him down by showing how close to God they are and, by extension, how much of a sinner he is.
My self-security is to the point where I can laugh and accept such things in good humor, usually
…but most people who don’t share the self-righteous faith of the blesser would probably find it offensive in subtle psychological ways.
The question, as I see it, is: What’s the most effective, healthy way to react?