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(Hi Honi, don’t worry, we aren’t taking it the wrong way at all <3 We absolutely do understand where you're coming from and how it can come off as targeted, which definitely was not our intention 🙁 That rule came out of a long discussion within BlogTeam that involved people of various faiths, including Christians, because we had received word of / noticed that people were getting uncomfortable by unprompted prayers or advice due to them not practicing the same religion, and most of those replies were prayers. We recognize that those prayers and pieces of advice come from a place of love and care, but, unfortunately, not everyone will appreciate that in the same way. For some people, a prayer that comes from someone of a different religion could be very uncomfortable because their God and their relationship may be different from yours, while other people will feel uncomfortable because they don't have a relationship like that.

For example, while I don't belong to any religion and I fully acknowledge and respect the relationships people have with God (for you as a Christian, Honi, it is your personal relationship and yours alone, it doesn't involve me), I personally feel uncomfortable when people say that they'll pray for me and my well-being or give me advice that is rooted in the practices or habits of a religion. This is simply because that wording (specifically "I'm praying for you" or similar phrases) isn't something I'm familiar with because I essentially grew up as an agnostic atheist. To me, a prayer doesn't hold much meaning and thus I'm not able to draw comfort from it like others might, and because it was worded as a prayer rather than something more general like a hope or a wish, it makes the fact that it was from a group that I'm not a part of all the more obvious to me and overshadows the comfort and love they hoped to share. I don't have any bad or complicated relationships with people who do believe in God or other similar divine beings – I'm just not comfortable with that aspect of my private life being interacted with.

Of course, I am just one person and I certainly don't speak for every agnostic atheist, much less every person, and my thought process isn't going to be the same thought process that other people have. I just hope that this can help explain why that rule got added to the Hug Page 🙂 )