Teaching Children to Pray That God Won't Kill Them

[MineralMan]

About the time I learned to read, at age 4, my maternal grandmother sent a couple of cross-stitched embroidered panels containing the two prayers shown below. They hung on the wall of my bedroom, presumably so I would read them daily. I did read them daily.

Frankly, they scared the crap out of me. Was I going to die in my sleep? During the day? Would only a god keep me alive? I recognized the use of fear to get me to believe that the only thing that kept me from some sort of sudden death was a faceless deity. Did that god want me to be that afraid? WTF?

I never did take them down from the wall, though. They hung there during my entire childhood and teen years. When I visit my parents, they're still on the wall in the guest bedroom.

I stopped being scared by them quite early, of course. But I never forgot the sentiment they represented and the unspoken story they told that said:

If you don't pray to God, you will die!

[marylandblue]

1. I wonder if this is a holdover from the days

when 50% of children died by age 5. Back then, dying before you woke was a real worry for kids, and in that context, the prayer sounds much more comforting.

[MineralMan]

3. It was the parents who worried back then, not the children.

Children have to be taught such things. I think you're right about the age of those childhood prayers. They do date back to at least the 19th century, and probably earlier.

Whatever their intent, though, they scared the crap out of one little boy until he figured them out.

My parents are both 93 years old. I have stickers with my name on them on the back of those framed embroideries. When my parents are gone, I'll get them. I may just hang them on my bedroom wall - just to remember how I felt when I first could read them.

Fear the Lord Your God!

Oh, bother, I say.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

2. I'll never forget my then 8-yr.-old niece's reaction the first

Time the basics of Christianity were explained to her.

But that doesn't make sense.

[MineralMan]

4. Good for her!

[Nitram]

5. When I was a child I thought it meant that If I happened to die during the night

I'd join God in Heaven.

[MineralMan]

8. I guess we all see things differently, even as children.

I saw it as a threat. I got over that, of course, but early on, it seemed so to me. Now, I can understand why, although I couldn't quite figure that out at age 4.

[Nitram]

17. Have you ever considered the meaning of the child's lullaby, Rockabye Baby? Now that's scary.

[Mariana]

15. If you read what they actually say

The person praying is praying (i.e. asking) to join God in Heaven. It isn't any certain thing, the way it's written and recited. What if God says no, I'm not taking your soul? Yes, I was the kind of kid who asks questions like that.

My mother made me recite that first prayer at night when I was very small. I only vaguely remember doing it. I had the same reaction as MineralMan, at about the same age, probably about the first time I really thought about what those words meant. I don't remember this, but my mom told me she stopped making me recite it because I started to scream in terror every night when it was time to go to bed.

[Nitram]

16. I was living in Cyprus during the Greek terrorism against English troops at the time, so

I knew there were far scarier things than god in the world. We got stopped at so many security check roadblocks that I thought Sears Roebuck was Sear Roadblock. I don't think I ever considered prayer to be a real thing.

[Igel]

22. Ah, a naive reading.

With an eye to authorial intent.

That's what it says. I struggle to get MM's reading.

[Permanut]

6. At age four, the power structure in your world..

and mine, was represented largely by parents and grandparents, or analogous figures. It was very convenient for them to have a backup authority off there in heaven, to enforce their rules and expectations. My parents used fear and intimidation to produce the behavior they desired in me, including the implication that something awful would happen if I didn't toe the mark. This prayer was not actively promoted by my parents, but tacitly approved.

Parents are both gone now; no do-overs possible, but I would have preferred that they socialize me by mentoring and teaching, rather than by intimidation. Just my two cents.

[MineralMan]

7. My parents were non-religious. They put those things on my

wall because they were made by my mother's mother. I mentioned them to my parents many years later and told them that they had been sort of scary when I was little. My mother said to me, "You know, I don't think we every really read them. I can see how you might have felt that way, though." As I said, my parents were nonreligious.

[Permanut]

9. Point taken..

Same here, parents went to church maybe on Christmas or Easter. My objection is that they didn't provide feedback to me about how I had the power in my own life to weigh the validity of these prayers, and all else in religion, on my own terms. Four years old would be too young for that, but you, know, as I came up through the years.

[MineralMan]

10. My parents sent their three kids off to Sunday School.

I asked why, as an adult. They said they just wanted to expose us to the dominant religion, so we'd have a context. We each made our own choices as time went by.

[Permanut]

12. That is the exact feedback I would have hoped for..

and didn't receive.

[MineralMan]

13. And yet, you found your own way anyhow.

[LakeArenal]

11. Never understood how the all powerful god

Would let me die in my sleep. Especially with so many nice people sincerely asking him not to let me die in my sleep.

The panels are charming though and irreplaceable.

[MineralMan]

14. Yes, and yet children die all the time, even children of parents who pray

daily. And there it is. It doesn't look much like that deity is keeping an eye on them, you know...

[Nitram]

18. Everyone dies. I believe it comforts Christians to believe death is not the end of existence.

I'm happy to have the atoms of my body dissolve back into the universe.

[LakeArenal]

19. We are stardust....

[Nitram]

20. Yup. Ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust.

The bible is a collection of the thoughts of probably thousands of different people over about as many years, each with different viewpoints, agendas, and experiences. They got that one right.

[struggle4progress]

21. We all die. It's a fact I was taught as a toddler. I've been careful ever since

but I know that in the end I'll finally die, no matter how careful I am. This children's prayer never terrified me as a child