Does the prayer that children say at bed sound creepy?

Sounds gruesome to me.

But typical of the religion-based scare tactics that were used for the last several centuries.

My mom told me she always thought it was a bit morbid. But keep in mind it originated during a time when childhood death was common.

When I was little I remember saying this every night and it did comfort me greatly. I’m not even sure if I really understood what I was saying at such a young age, but I know I felt a lot better when I said it.

No. As a child it was comforting. Children do think about death.

Most prayers sound creepy, if you think about them too much.

Yes, it is creepy, but I doubt children really think about the meaning of the words so it isn’t creepy to them most likely. I used to read the Haggadah for Passover and it talks about God and I never connected it to some God in the sky controlling things. My family never talked about God otherwise, nor believed in God, it was just words.

It was just something I said without any thought, until one day I was like, “wait a fucking minute, what the hell’s up with this whole ‘if I die before I wake’ stuff?

Yes it’s very creepy. It implies that there’s some reasonable chance that you’ll just die in your sleep. I have to imagine that this happens to healthy children at some exceedingly low rate that to comment on it, is itself very weird. I mean we don’t walk out of our door in Virginia and say a quick prayer about how if a random giraffe happens to escape from a zoo and trample me, that I give my soul up to God, because that would be extremely unlikely and weird. It’s a guess, but I have to think the odds of an otherwise healthy child dying in their sleep, has to be equally as unlikely, or at least within a few orders of magnitude.

I think the prayer is over 200 years old. Young children died quite a bit back then. Something like 2 in 5 died before age 5. Making it past age 5 put you in a much higher likelihood to make it into adulthood.

Each night I go to bed
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
No, I ain’t lookin’ for forgiveness
But before I’m six foot deep
Lord, I got to ask a favor
And I’ll hope you’ll understand
‘Cause I’ve lived life to the fullest
Let this boy die like a man
Starin’ down the bullet
Let me make my final stand

Not really creepy. Every one dies. Even children. All children think about it at some time or another. To me the prayer is asking the lord to watch over you while you sleep and, if you die in your sleep, to continue watching over you in the after-life.

I was taught to say this prayer at night when I went to bed. Saying it helped me get to sleep. It wasn’t creepy when I recited it in the nursery. It simply meant I was safe whatever might happen and that was quite reassuring.

”Since the affairs of men rest still uncertain, let’s reason with the worst that may befall”

As a child, it didn’t occur to me something bad would happen when I sleep. I just wonder how many of you who recited this prayer were afraid of the dark, thought there were monsters under the bed, or possibly thought about death much more often than I did. Christianity is so obsessed with death. That’s the main thing in the religion, going to the right place when you die.

I never found it creepy as death was for old people.
I’ve never been afraid of the dark or obsessed with death. The entire point was knowing God’s got you no matter what.

It wasn’t creepy to me. But I was also sure I wasn’t going to just DIE in my sleep for no reason.

But from an adult stand point, yeah. Creepy.

I mean, remember, people died ALOT more in Ye Olde Times. Most of humanity for most of history has lived a subsistence lifestyle where when you got through a year without losing anyone to disease or famine or war….that was a good year.

I mean, ever really analyzed the lyrics to ‘Ring Around the Rosey” and it’s gruesome description of the Black Death? There’s alot of stuff like that.

But don’t worry about your soul. You don’t have one. It’s just a metaphor. The supernatural isn’t real. It’s just human imagination trying to make sense of a world it didn’t understand.

I always thought so. But not as spooky as all of the End Times Book of Revelations stuff. Always creeped me out.

History of prayer is from 1700 or before !

Let’s keep in mind that these prayers were from hundreds of years ago when it was a higher probability that one would “die before I wake”.

@Strauss but if you died before you woke, how would you know you were dead?

You don’t have to “know” you’re dead to be dead @elbanditoroso.

Because according to the common belief at the time, you die but your soul doesn’t. You go to Heaven, He’ll or Purgatory (or maybe Limbo?). And the prayer implies the Lord will take your soul to Heaven.