prayers

When I was six years old I decided that God should give us time off to be naughty.

Mark (Vermont)

When I was in Kindergarden, the first Gulf War broke out. I didn't understand war, but I picked up enough to know that the Americans were fighting Saddam Hussein. One day my mom told me to pray for my enimies. That night, my prayers included "...and please let Saddam Hussein be blown to smiterines!"

bjc

When I was a kid I was afraid to say the prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep," because I thought that saying the part, "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take" would make god think it was ok if I died in my sleep.

Trink

Lords Prayer: "and Thenscehe shall come to judge the living and the dead." I always wondered who the new guy Thenscehe (thence he) was and why no one ever talked about him b/c he seemed like a pretty major guy.

phidda

I used to think that in the Our Father prayer, when everyone was saying "Lead us not into temptation;" they were saying "Lead our snot, into ten stations." I believed this until i was about nine.

Larissa

Before I could read I thought that the Lord's Prayer said "and lead a snot into temptation".

Andrew

I did not grow up with religion at all. Nevertheless, when I was 6 I had my own religion. I prayed to an old cologne bottle (it was gold and had a fake eagle perched on it) and a plastic skull. I used to pray that the girls in my class would come live with me and wear their hair in the style of princess Leah. (I still think this is a pretty good idea). The way I got a prayer to heaven was I would write the prayer on a rock with my finger, throw it up in the air, and plug my ears. (Not hearing it fall allowed me to believe that it went up to god).

tom

I used to believe that God was actually at the back of the hall when you had to pray in the morning assembly before school. Even more stupidly I believed that if you didn't shut your eyes for the whole prayer, he would burn them out with lighting. So I plucked up the courage after probably about a year of this behaviour and looked back one day... when God wasn't there I let out a yelp of relief and was promptly caned in front of the whole school. Strangely, I don't really believe in God that much anymore.

Rupert

when i was little i thought that when they say "thanks be to god" they were saying "thanks peter god" so i thought that the lady who always said that was named peter, and i wondered why she had a boys name.

Emily

I never got why we always ended prayers by saying "all men" (amen.) And I wondered which men they were talking about.

Joanna

I used to believe that taking the lord's name in vain was praying for silly or selfish things. When you prayed then God or Jesus had to stop whatever they were doing to listen to your prayer. This was a waste of their time which they could be doing more important things. This was a real problem because there are so many people in the world. Also religious people hurt Jesus's feeling when they wore crosses because it reminded Jesus of his death.

Anon

I used to believe that, during the lord's prayer at church, someone would play big kettle drums in the background, outside the church somewhere. I didn't work out 'til i was about 10 that it was just massed male voices making the bassy rumbles!

Andrew

I used to pray everynight before I went to bed, and I had 2 nearly OCD-like things I needed to do in my prayers. First, I had to ask God to bless a very specific list of people I knew in a specific order.

Secondly, I believed that prayer was a direct conversation with God himself, so I was very careful to let him know that my prayer was over, often for several minutes after saying "Amen." I thought that if I didn't do this and accidentally said a bad word or did something bad, God would know immediately, and would be angry with me.

Hmm... may be why I'm a lapsed-Christian today...

humble Chris

When I was little my grandmother made me say this prayer at night before going to sleep "..and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." This prayer scared me because I was afraid I would die in my sleep, and also that God couldn't stop it--so I was afraid to fall asleep and would lie awake in the darkness for hours tryng not to fall asleep.

scaredy cat

My parents were very proud of my saying my prayers while kneeling beside my bed. In the Poem "Jentle Jesus meek and mild" I mis-spoke the line "Pity my simplicity" as "Pity my simple city". This at least made sense to me at a time in my life when the original was, to say the least, obscure! The trouble was that my reading was never corrected and any witness was encouraged to giggle at the pius child.

Patrick Spence-Thomas

I was raised Catholic, and was clearly a feminist since at least 5 years old. There is a certain Catholic prayer that goes, "For our men and our salvation, He came down from heaven." For years, I thought salvation MUST mean women, because why would Jesus come only for our men?

Jessibat

my mom always said we should care about and pray for all creatures...when we would drive to visit my grandma we would pass a lot of different towers for electricity. for some reason i thought that a couple of them looked like two large girraffes,standing back to back.my mom also said to not brag so i never told her that i prayed for the stuck,frozen girraffes every time we passed them.poor things!

laurarey

My mom would always make me pray before I went to bed when I was young. She would say the same prayer every night, and it said "if I don't make it through the night, may my soul go to heaven" or something like that, and I would always picture a salt shaker flying up to heaven because "soul" and ''salt" sounded alike. LOL.

Anon

When I was about seven or eight, I truly thought that burglers were going to come into my house, steal our stuff and kill us all. I prayed every night for my family's safety. I would first complement God alot. Telling him how wonderful he was and thanking him for being with me....but then I would add "god, i'm not just trying to butter you up, I really do mean everything I said." Anytime I praised God I thought that he thought I was just trying to get on his good side.

JewLea

I used o belive that if you prayed, with a finger up, not folding, you wouldnt bring that finger with you to heaven

KE