I have little to say about the death of Anna Nicole Smith. She and I were exactly the same age, and I suppose all I can say is that while I never paid much attention to her career, I always felt a strange tenderness whenever I saw her face or heard about her. There was a very obvious frailty to her, a kind of vulnerability that I can’t really explain. It’s sad.
A few days ago, Chris Clarke made the difficult decision to put down his beloved dog Zeke. (He had posted last week about steeling himself for that fast-approaching decision). Zeke went peacefully; the not-safe-if-you-don’t-want-to-weep link to that story is here. As always, Chris writes with such clarity that it makes me ache, though I’m not sure if that ache is more from empathy with his grief or envy at the grace with which he writes about it.
Now that Amanda has moved on to serve John Edwards, Chris is writing at Pandagon. And he’s got a fabulous post up today (one in which I am quoted, but without being named). It’s a post about the various things people have written to him in the aftermath of Zeke’s passing. Chris is not much of a theist, but that hasn’t stopped the well-intentioned from assuring him that he and Zeke will be reunited in heaven. (Lots of references to the Rainbow Bridge.)
Chris and Becky don’t believe in the Rainbow Bridge. He writes:
Here’s the thing: I don’t believe in an afterlife. What’s more, in contexts like the one in which I live now, I find the whole concept of an afterlife to be profoundly unhelpful. No, that’s not strong enough. It’s like sticking a fucking corkscrew in my heart and yanking it out. After all, I’m not so completely rational that I don’t succumb to the temptation to stand on his grave and talk to him. After years of indoctrination in Roman Catholic dogma, the reflex of imagining the Pearly Gates dies hard. But it’s false hope, and both the glimmer of reunion and the fleeting thought that he misses us make me feel worse.
And Chris has asked folks to please not persist in foisting what he sees as false, perhaps even cruel reassurances upon him as he grieves his friend. Sadly, that request was ignored. Folks continued to push:
When people respond to a politely worded request to can the heaven stuff by ramping up the heaven stuff, that is an example of religious intolerance. When a person has to take time out from grieving to forgive people who’ve made him feel a lot worse, telling himself that he has to give them slack because they’re upset over the death of his family member, that he has to remember they’re just trying to make him feel better with promises of meeting again despite his express request, that is a symptom of religious intolerance.
Chris and I both love the rolling hills of the San Francisco Bay Area. He hikes them with what seems like reverence; I tend to attack them with hyper tenacity, measuring my fitness on their slopes. We both love animals, and we’ve both lost creatures whom we adored within the past year. And when it comes to the great questions, the ones about life and death and the possibility that our souls endure, sentient and unique, beyond this world — Chris and I have different answers.
And because I know he and I have different answers, I don’t try and comfort him in his vulnerabilty with my answers. Authentic Christian evangelism is not predatory. Authentic Christian evangelism doesn’t see the grief of those who don’t share our faith as a “special opportunity” to do some witnessin’! And far too many of my brothers and sisters in Christ make this obnoxious error.
I use this blog to share my faith, of course. But the best way I can carry out the Great Commission is to lead a good life, a life devoted to justice and compassion, a life that is happy and considerate and brave. And when people see any goodness in me, or ask me where my strength comes from — then heavens to Betsy, I’m gonna share. But to paraphrase what they say in AA, evangelism is about “attraction, not promotion.” It’s about living out our faith in ways that will draw others to it; it’s not about foisting pamphlets on passers-by, and it’s not about saccharine promises to pray for those who have already made it clear that they don’t want to hear it.
Do I pray for non-Christians? Sure I do. Do I tell them about it, as if I’ve done them a special favor and tucked the spiritual equivalent of a $20 bill in their purse when they weren’t looking? No, I don’t. In his Pandagon post, Chris quotes what I wrote on his blog when I learned of Zeke’s death:
Much love to you and Becky from a man, a woman, and six chinchillas in Pasadena.
That seemed right. Chris doesn’t need to hear that I’m lifting him and Becky up in prayer, and imploring Jesus to soothe their pain. Chris doesn’t need me to tell him that more and more Christians are convinced that we may indeed find animals in the next life. He doesn’t need me to claim that I believe that he and Zeke will hike together again, each in uncorrupted bodies, climbing the true mountain in the undiscovered country that lies beyond the grave. I can write that sort of comforting, sophomoric bullshit very easily. It comes naturally to me. And it’s more than bullshit, I suppose; I not only am certain that there is a heaven, I am pretty danged hopeful that all the beings I have ever loved will be with me there. And there will be no more tears, for the former things have passed away… and so on.
When a fellow Christian asks for my prayers, I promise them that I will storm the very gates of heaven on their behalf. With those who do not believe in prayer, when they tell me of their grief, I share a gentle “I’m so sorry.” I often ask what I can do, which usually is little more than listening. And my prayers are quiet. I might pray just as hard for those who don’t believe as for those who do — but I don’t feel the need to share that tidbit. I often say “I”m sending you love”. I always mean it.
I lost my father last June 22, eleven days after our first chinchilla, the beautiful Matilde, left us without warning. Sometimes, usually in the early mornings, the reality of their deaths hits me with such force that I have to sit for a moment. My chest still gets very tight when I think of my Daddy. And I’ll be honest about what I believe:
I believe my Dad and my Matilde are together somewhere. I believe that Matty died so suddenly because she knew her beloved opa, her abuelo, would need her in the next world and she wanted to get things ready for him. I believe it because I want to believe it, even though my Dad was not a Christian and my own faith is dubious about whether or not animals have souls. So when people told me that I’d see them both again, I was cheered and comforted. Those who reassured me that it was possible to be reunited with those who have gone before knew that I believe in the resurrection; they knew that I do believe that we will all be together on the far side of the Jordan. Those aren’t just pretty words to me — they are certainties as certain in my life as the Pythagorean theorem, the orbit of the moon around the earth, as the pounding of the surf on the rocks of Carmel Point.
On this blog, in this space that is my own (bought and paid for), I will say what I believe as honestly as I can. When I write a note to comfort the grieving, when I reach out to those I know who are in pain, I choose my words carefully. Their journey may not be my journey. They may well be sheep of a different fold, as my shepherd says. And I choose my words carefully, making sure that the only constant is love.
Question for you: This guy’s Pandagon post claims that 1) he warned people not to talk about heaven, and 2) people did so nonetheless. But I don’t see any trace of either 1) or 2) in either of the posts that you link (on his own blog). I especially didn’t see anything that looked like ” a profound personal insult,” let alone anything that would remotely resemble the kinds of insults that Amanda Marcotte hurled with regularity.
I DO see, on his Jan. 29 post, a comment from Xopher wishing that the dog would be reincarnated, and then a reply from Chris Clarke saying, “Xopher, the fact that I unbelieve in such stuff doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be appreciated. Thanks, friend.”
Hmm.
If you read Chris’ post carefully, John, he mentions that he moderates his comments. Many of those that were most hurtful didn’t end up staying.
Hugo, please send grieving thoughts to Chris for me. I read and thoroughly enjoy your blog for many reasons, 1 of them being your compassion, and the others having to do with your unique perspective that I absorb much of it in.
My own personal beliefs have lead me down to a path that would be best described as spiritual agnosticism. Some would say that I am anti-organized religion, and in many circumstances I would agree, because of what I have seen in the last 2 decades is finding ways of organizing people out to determine who really knows god. My understanding of Him is that there is no exclusion from his home, which is the church, right? That being said, I am still a supporter of organized religion of all faiths. Those who worship and believe with in those groups earn a great deal of my respect. (I’ll save the until what’s for my blog)
My point on this is, I wanted to thank you on many levels for sharing your beliefs with us on your blog. It is clear that your faith is important to you, and you share very openly that and your concerns for others, believer’s and non-believers the same, without taking a place of judgment and religiosity. It seems to me that your humanity is fed it’s light from your Christianity, and that is a beautiful thing. Hugo, I celebrate your faith although I do not share it in the same origins, the same goes for the numberous other faiths out there, because I do think there is a full circle that once everyone can celebrate each others faiths, including us non-believers, I have faith that maybe, just maybe humanity will make it.
When I was a young ‘un and my parents would only pay for records that were Christian, I was all over a record by Michael Peace, the first Christian rapper to make any kind of splash.
Even at that young age, though, I know how awful I found one particular song to be. It was called “Automatic Witness.” It opened with the sound of a robot, beep boop beep, and the only other thing I remember about it was the refrain:
“He’s an automatic witness
converting everyone he sees…”
I wish I could find the lyrics online, because it was just freaking awful, for all the reasons you cite and allude to in your post, Hugo.
I think one of the problems is that, unless you are a long-time reader of CRN, you WOULDN’T know that Chris, sensitive as he is and passionate as he is, was going to be HURT by one’s mention of Heaven or the Happy Hunting Grounds. I think he is in a place right now where mildly grating things hurt a lot; he is raw.
Back before he closed comments I wanted to say something in a caring vein to him, but I didn’t because I just couldn’t be sure how he would hear it. He seems like the kind of person that if you inadvertantly hurt him, he would think you were a jerk forever, especially if you are the kind of person (like me) who (unintentionally!) comes off as a solipsistic jerk sometimes.
WHen it comes to the “I am praying for you” people (I am thinking of OLD people mostly), when you are in PERSON you can kind of tell if they mean “I really care about your pain” or “snark”. On the innertubes, it is harder to know.
Plus, readers may feel very close to a writer, due to all the info sharing etc, but to the writer, the commenter (esp if you have many) may just be a name, so the expression(s) of goodwill may get to sound like empty and unsincere repetitions, and the intentions may sound questionable, because you don’t ACTUALLY KNOW each other.
Thanks for that post Hugo. One of the reasons that I always, always fill out the ‘Religion’ section of medical and school forms as ‘none’ is that if something bad were to happen to me, my partner or my children, the absolute last thing I could handle is a helpful hospital priest/vicar/rabbi/monk/whatever trying to offer me what I feel is false hope.
I understand that they may want to pray for me or perform some ceremony they believe to be helpful (heck, they can run naked three times widdershins round a sacred flame if they want) that is _their_ business. However, if I am in pain, if I am grieving, do not ask me to take on the additional burden of trying to empathise with your (to me) alien world view.
Thank you so much for this, Hugo. I’m a cradle Christian, raised in the LCMS and now looking for a less conservative church to attend, but I had a Baptist-raised college friend who, after several years knowing her, made it clear to me that she doesn’t believe I’m a Christian (among other things because I’m bisexual and haven’t had a specific conversion experience). Her obnoxious, clumsy attempts at converting me to her particular brand of Christianity eventually drove us apart. During the conversation in which she told me in so many words that I wasn’t a Christian, she threw, “Do you want me to tell you about Jesus?” at my head like a threat. This knowing I was raised Christian. When I landed myself in the hospital with a suicidal gesture, the first thing she said when I told her was not, “Are you all right?” or “I’m sorry this happened,” or even, “Why did you do this to yourself?” — it was “Have you considered reading the Bible?” And no, the constant, chipper, “I’ll pray for you!” didn’t help either. She’s otherwise a sweet person and I valued her friendship, but this stuff chipped away at the foundation until it couldn’t sustain itself anymore. All this time later I still have to work hard at forgiving, and sometimes a guilty voice inside me says I shouldn’t have to work at forgiving someone who only thought she was doing the work of the Lord. Bless you for meeting people on their own terms.
That’s lovely, Hugo. Chris’s post really hit home to me because I lost two people and a dog last year.. the remainder of my family is knee-jerk protestant and I almost wish I hadn’t flown to the funeral service I did. The entire eulogy by the pastor was about how churchy the deceased was and how we should all go to church more. Which is understandable in a church service, but there was nothing more than that - no remembrance of the man who lived. I wanted to talk about that man and what he meant to me, and hear about what he meant to others and what he was like when he was young and all that, and even the fellowship afterwards didn’t want to talk about him at all. There was noone to grieve with. And all those people would say to me, in that case and in the other deaths, was how they were in heaven now. Well, I’m glad that makes them feel better but I don’t believe in heaven and that actually makes me feel worse. I’ve never felt so alone.
What I’m trying to say is, I wish the Christians I know were as empathetic and thoughtful as you, Hugo.
I’d be interested if you could expand on this sometime (I don’t want to derail this thread, but maybe you could stick it in the queue for future posts). Perhaps my conception of the soul isn’t Cartesian/metaphysical enough to sort out how the normal animal rights arguments — which you obviously buy into — wouldn’t also prove that animals have souls.
Sorry, Stentor, poor choice of words on my part. I, Hugo, do believe that animals have souls; by “my faith” I meant the broader church to which I belong, which remains in some doubt on the matter.
My general take on it:
You’re a Christian. Fine. don’t treat your faith like an Amway salesman who looks for a chance to cram it into any conversational nook they can find. That’s what those people were doing. Treating their religion like some sort of cheapass pyramid scheme.
You’re a Christian. Okay, so where does this mean that you put your feelers out for people whoa re hurting like you’re going for the weak one in the herd? If your religion has any meaning or strength, it wouldn’t have to sound out the weak ones in the herd. And it would need to be marketed in the first place.
Just another atheist here who simply can’t understand how people can claim to feel so strongly about anything and then reveal a total lack of respect for and understanding of it in their every act.
I came across your blog through feministing, and civilliberty. I have been reading for some time, but this is my first comment. What you and Chris (from Pandagon) have talked about is why I try my best to stay away from devoutly religious people (of many different religions). I am atheist, but that does not mean that I made that decision lightly or that I am ignorant of different faiths. It is slightly offensive when people assume everyone believes their beliefs and invoke a god or other aspects of their religion in normal conversation where it is not warranted. It is slightly disrespectful if they know that I am atheist and actively ignore that fact. It is absolutely disrespectful and insulting for someone to decide that I, a 27 year old woman, cannot “correctly” choose what I believe and what I don’t and therefore, I must be convinced that I am wrong.
Your ability to remain devoutly and overtly religious while truly respecting diversity and respecting others’ rights to their own beliefs is a testimate to the strength and depth of your individual faith. One must be confident and understand their own faith in order to accept and respect that other people have other beliefs without trying to prosthelytize to them. It comforts me that you work with youth.
Of the taking of offense there is no end.
This reminds me of the funeral I recently attended for the teacher who was murdered by her own husband. Ironically, he was the same pastor for my best friend’s father’s funeral, who died suddenly of a heart attack two years ago. He was also the principal of my boyfriend’s Christian elementary school.
Anyway, I mentioned in a previous post that this pastor deeply offended me during both funerals for reasons you described. The funerals he pastored were for people who died in horrifying, sudden ways. Both my friend’s dad and my brother’s teacher were in their early 40s. They had young children, too. All throughout the service, he reminded us that they were in Heaven and we would see them again, even though many in attendance were not Christian. He also preached that we would spend eternity in Hell if we did not accept Christ. He continued to say things like, “It is my prayer that even though we are hurting and devestated with loss, that everyone who does not know Jesus would know him today.” He said those those things in a butterscotch sweet voice with this obnoxious smile. I was fuming inside. I thought he was wholly insensitive and arrogant. Many of the teachers and students who attended the funeral for the teacher were not Christian. And I don’t think the teacher herself was Christian; her mother was. But that’s another story.
So I hear you loud and clear when you say, “Authentic Christian evangelism doesn’t see the grief of those who don’t share our faith as a “special opportunity” to do some witnessin’! And far too many of my brothers and sisters in Christ make this obnoxious error.” If anything, witnessing to someone who just lost ANYONE could hurt them even more. This pastor certainly proved that for me.
I also hear you about prayer. My 12-year-old cousin who was arrested for shoplifting the other day doesn’t want to hear that I’m praying for her. Her sister, who stole some of my jewelry during Christmas four years ago, doesn’t need to know that either. A third cousin of mine broke into her brother’s house and stole his checks and PlayStation 2 plus money. (As you can see, my father’s side of the family continues to prove their trailer park, White Trash roots. They’re all angry, hurting and untrustworthy people. I pray for them constantly, but I’d never call them up and say, “You need to know Jesus, SINNER! Change your life around!” But oh God, do I pray and think about them everyday.
When my father (a lifelong alcoholic) died last summer, he had a church funeral, as most people in Denmark do, though he was an atheist.
The priest who held the funeral speech had a great part about my father’s life and struggels, but then he turned it into a preaching for Jesus, thus ruining it all. A funeral, or condolence, should be about the deceased and those left behind, not about preaching.
If you go to a funeral in a church, or if someone arranges for a minister or priest or whatever to run the funeral … you’re going to hear some religious stuff. If it bothers you enough, don’t go. Doesn’t bother me - I know if I go to McDonalds, I’m going to get fast food, if I go to a mall I’m going to find mindless consumers and if I go to a church I’m going to hear church stuff. The corpse laying there is not the person who lived before anyway, it’s now a chunk of non-living chemicals, so you can hold your own type of ceremony away from it if you want - for the people here who are touting their atheism, you should realize that.
Otherwise … I can only laugh at the number of “deeply offended” people today. LOL. For any petty reason they can find. It shows how fat, spoiled, pathetic and soft society has become.
A guy who was drafted into the Vietnam war and had his legs blown off probably has a reason to feel pissed. A person who goes into a church and hears church stuff probably doesn’t.
Sorry about the messed up blockquote - the first paragraph was quoted, the second was mine.
OK, that makes much more sense. (I was in a Bible study group this summer where things got fairly heated over this point, so I know what you’re talking about.)
Thanks for the post, Hugo. I liked it.
And if I post about my grief on the internet, I’m gonna get self-righteous and defensive people barging in to tell me I’m feeling the wrong thing the wrong way. That’s just the way the world works.
It’s been my experience that those who say other people are “too easily offended” are the ones who are soft and lazy. It takes work to pay attention to what other people feel. It’s so much easier to tell yourself that your stepping on them didn’t really hurt them, that they’re just complaining out of habit or “weakness.”
I like the phrase “predatory evangelism” - it nicely sums up this sort of spiritual ambulance chasing.
Hugo — you completely avoided two of my main observations:
1: Where did Chris Clarke tell people not to talk about heaven? On Pandagon, he claims that it was “early on on my blog,” but he doesn’t give any links. This would seem rather important, because he’s so vicious towards the people who supposedly “respond to a politely worded request to can the heaven stuff by ramping up the heaven stuff.” Given that Clarke obviously didn’t make such a “request” in the posts in question, how does he (let alone anyone else) know that the same people who made the “heaven” comments had actually read his earlier warning? Maybe they hadn’t seen that warning at all.
2: What’s the explanation for the difference between:
(A) Clarke’s sympathetic response to Xopher’s mention of reincarnation (”Xopher, the fact that I unbelieve in such stuff doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be appreciated. Thanks, friend.”). (Comment 15 here: http://faultline.org/index.php/site/comments/monday_january_29_2007/)
versus:
(B) his response to what were apparently well-meaning and innocuous mentions of “Rainbow” (not even sure what that means): “that is not just religious intolerance but a profound personal insult, and I do not give fuck one about your intentions in making that insult.”
What’s going on here? On one hand, he “appreciate[s]” comments in which he doesn’t believe, but on the other hand . . . vitriol.
John, I’m not speaking for Chris Clarke on this blog. Chris Clarke is not the subject of the post. Avoiding predatory evangelism is. But don’t try and get at other bloggers through me.
In this thread, criticisms of my position are fine. Criticisms of Chris are not.
Xopher’s mention of reincarnation
Wrong, unsurprisingly. That was an offer to do something akin to praying for me and my family, in the efficacy of which I also disbelieve. But I am grateful for the intent, and I find it rather a shoddy argument that you would turn my glad tolerance of the benign religious beliefs of my friends against me as some sort of damning inconsistency.
If you dig even a little on my blog you’ll find not only specific requests to refrain from talking about the afterlife - in more than one thread - but you’ll also find a history of my booting people, including friends, for persisting in religious proselytizing.
And many, many of those people whose comments were nuked, or who emailed me, started those comments with phrases akin to “I know you don’t want to hear this, but…”
But the fact of my requests, as hard as they may have been for you to find, is really a side issue: No one should even have to make that kind of request.
Lemme bold that for you, John, since you apparently had some trouble deciphering even Xopher’s rather straightforward statement:
No one should even have to make that kind of request.
The point of my Pandagon post was not to provide chapter and verse or to argue my case as though it was a civil torts suit. The point was to provide a story for the benefit of thoughtful people, believers in an afterlife or not, who wish to avoid hurting the feelings of the temporarily vulnerable.
If you don’t count yourself among those people but would rather argue the merits of the specific case as though it was one more masturbatory political blog thread, that’s your prerogative. If you don’t see a problem with telling people they need to accept any hurtful, ignorant thing people say to them while grieving as long as those hurtful things don’t conflict with the majority religious ideology, then of course you’re going to pick nits. But in that case I wasn’t really addressing you with the post, now, was I?
As for the vitriol: three days ago, after we’d gotten to a sort of even keel and were able to more or less function, my wife opened a card from our vet — our vet — which included a card with a specific, detailed story of how pets endure in the afterlife until they are rejoined by their human companions. This caused my wife intense grief and sorrow, not to mention a feeling of betrayal as she had hoped to find some small comfort in the vet’s note. “You took good care of him, he had a happy life,” or something along those lines.
Instead, I spent time helping my wife recover from the note our vet sent in the wake of our dog’s death.
There is no vitriol I could spew that would be sufficient to express my anger at that, or my disgust at people like you who would write her pain off as overreaction, as being unreasonable, as damningly inconsistent with our gratitude for prayers we don’t believe in made by friends we do believe in.
No one should even have to make that kind of request.
Really? You do realize that you’re living in a culture where upwards of 90% of people believe in some sort of heaven or afterlife, and where you’re going to run into an awful lot of people who (believe it or not) are absolutely sincere in thinking that they’re being comforting when they say, “You’ll see him again someday,” or something like that.
Yes, I’ll agree with you and Hugo that people should have respected your wishes. Absolutely. But it’s a bit much to say that “no one should even have to make that kind of request,” as if the average blog commenter should be able to read your mind and know to walk on eggshells (at least as to certain religious beliefs).
“Upwards of 90 percent” is not the same as “everyone.” Jews are 2.1 percent of the total population in the US. Are you gonna say that Jews shouldn’t get pissed off when well-meaning people tell them “Your mother’s with Jesus now” if they didn’t notify the person in advance that they’re not Christian? I mean, 97.9 percent of the population isn’t Jewish. Are they supposed to read minds?
… He describes how he sometimes carefully parses his words to convey his loving thoughts to people in ways that don’t distract by imposing his religious beliefs. I’m much more uncertain about my relationship to prayer, yet less careful of what I say to others going through difficult times. Ironically, that’s a reflection of my ambivalence rather than any form of religious certainty.
John Doe and Chris both have good points. Personally, here’s how I see this:
When my best friend lost her father without warning, I wasn’t sure whether or not to mention God. Although we are both Christians, it felt really ackward. He died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. Her mother walked in her room at 3:00 a.m., three hours after he passed, and said, “Honey, wake up… you need to sit up…” When she was awake, she simply said, “Your daddy just died.”
We were both angry at God. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the depth of her loss and, God willing, I will never know it myself. But I felt it genuinely insensitive to remind her that her dad was “in a better place” when she was so shocked. She couldn’t even cry three days after. When she was ready, we talked about heaven and where God was in all of this. But I didn’t want to push it until she was ready.
Another close friend of mine lost her father nine months later. Again, I didn’t want to bring God up, especially since she had prayed that he would survive the cancer for months and months. It felt cruel to talk about heaven. But I prayed (and still pray) for them. Now, they are willing to discuss the afterlife.
My insight? I think Chris is right. Nobody should have to make that kind of request. And I also think John has a point: nobody can read another’s mind. I think, though, this stems beyond statistics regarding how many Americans believe in God. While many believe in God, even in the face of a devestating loss, they may not be ready to talk about spirituality for awhile. So, if you’re not sure whether or not they’re ready, or you’re not sure whether or not they be believe in God or an afterlife at all, it’s best to play it safe and say, “I am deeply sorry for your loss. You’re in my thoughts, and I am here for you if you need someone to be with.”
Kay, thanks for the post at your place. I’m quite confident I can’t read anyone’s mind, which is why I do as you do, Mermade, and keep my more explicitly Christian prayers private when someone who may not believe as I do is grieving. There is a time for sharing one’s faith — an acute moment of grief and vulnerability ain’t it.
Thank you for this, Hugo.
I’m not Christian myself, but I am devout, and my faith has a lot to say about death and dying.
One of those things is that not respecting the grief of the bereaved is a hell of a lot worse a sin than, well, a whole lot of things. It’s nice to hear it from an evangelical Christian, but I just want to underline: predatory evangelism oughtn’t be considered authentic for any of our faiths. We can do better, and piety as a concept can do better.
Comforting friends–heck, comforting strangers–comes way before anything like attempts at conversion, for anyone claiming to have anything to do with compassion. And no, John Doe, they shouldn’t have to make that kind of request. While it’s polite to take well-meant sentiments graciously, it’s also part of the act of compassion to pay attention to the person you’re interacting with, and to attempt to discern what they actually need and would consider considerate and kind. Part of being well-meaning in comfort is to not rest on one’s laurels-of-good-intention and actually pay attention to the comfortee and their needs.
I understand the irritation with having to hear “God talk” when you don’t want to hear God talk if you’re an atheist. What I don’t hear are atheists realizing that the flip side of the coin is that hearing atheists bad mouth God (even in seemingly innocuous ways, or unintentionally ignorant ways) is just as agitating, hurtful and predatory against Christians.