I love Google Translate. Where else can you instantly learn how to say “Let’s use our bingo winnings to rent a tugboat!” in Arabic, Japanese and Tahitian? Super useful.

I’m thinking, though, it might be time for some more nuanced translation. Like, say: Religious to Atheist. So often, when people are really religious, it’s like they’ve taken their entire lexicon and submerged it in holy water. All their everyday expressions are dripping with evidence of their faith.

Of course, it’s not all that difficult for most of us to get to the core of what our pious peers are trying to say (secularly speaking). Context is everything. But for a kid who has little or no experience with religious expressions — could be helpful, right? Or for secularists who tend to get ever-so-slightly irritated by certain references — “I’ll pray for you,” for example, or “Praise Jesus!”— maybe there’s power in simply training ourselves to hear the secular version of those expressions. Like if someone said “I’ll pray for you,” and all you heard was “I’ll be thinking about you,” that would provoke nothing but warm feelings in you, right?

Maybe the opposite is true, too. Maybe religious people could read into our freakishly Jesus-free references and find the idioms that seems more familiar to them. And that’s a good thing. Because stripped down, the emotions behind each pair of expressions are exactly the same.

So let’s do this thing. I’ll go first.

Religious Atheist

“Thank God!” → → → → “I’m so grateful!”

“God is good!” → → → → “Life is good!”

“I’ll pray for you.” → → → → “I’ll be thinking about you.”

“I feel so blessed.” → → → → “I feel so lucky.”

“I pray to God that…” → → → → “I really hope that…”

“Bless you.” → → → → “Thank you.” (or “Gesundheit”)

“Hallelujah!” → → → → “You said it!”

“Amen” → → → → “Agreed” or “Thank you for saying that.”

“Lord have mercy on your soul.” → “You better hope you don’t get what you deserve.”

“Praise Jesus” → → → → “I’m so grateful!”

“Let’s say grace.” → → → → “Let’s say some words of gratitude and hope.”

“Good heavens!” → → → → “That is really surprising!”

“Heaven help us.” → → → → “This is not a good situation. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Go to hell.” → → → → “Go to hell.”

Anything to add?