I was going through Unless The Lord Shall Build the House on the PH, when a tangent occurred to me that was too lengthy to include with the deconstruction of the hymn. So I thought I would inflict it on all four of you reading this blog.

Bear in mind that, under Armstrongism, the devout believer was expected to engage in at least one hour each per day of prayer and bible study. The bible study was often conducted with a King James bible on one side, a Strong’s Concordance on the other, and a stack of church literature, squarely in the middle.

You would begin by selecting a booklet or a PT article that you wanted to go “in-depth” on, and you would go through the article, looking up the word definitions in Strong’s as you compared the verses to Armstrong’s text. Any “explanations” given in the church literature for alternate interpretations of the text were the acceptable ones. That was bible “study”.

Prayer, ah now, that was another thing entirely. To be done in private, usually in your bedroom with the door closed and at bedside while kneeling on a pillow (the pillow was optional, depending upon how self-flagellant you were feeling that day). There was never a standard set or rote prayer that the Worldwider was expected to engage in: There was no “Our Father Who Art in Heaven”, or “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”. (Such rote prayers were, in fact, viewed as utterly pagan.) We were expected to literally talk to god.

Bear in mind we were expected to carry on a conversation with the old testament, pillar-of-fire, bashes-babies-against-walls Judaic god. Needless to say, the lyric “worship in Thy fear towards Thy holy place” was not just an abstract idea for the devout Worldwider. Since there wasn’t a set catechism for prayer, every individual’s prayers were different. In all likelihood, they probably all took the same form however.

Here’s what mine sounded like, if there had been anybody listening:

• An appeal to the eternal lord of hosts to hear my prayer
• Beg forgiveness for whatever sins I had committed that day, even the ones I wasn’t aware of
• If my list of sins wasn’t that lengthy, or were not that grievous, I tacked on a request or two or three, if I dared
• Thank the eternal for any consideration given to these requests, then thank the eternal even if he saw fit not to grant them
• Thank the lord for any trials or tests that had befallen me recently, and beg forgiveness if I wasn’t handling them with enough grace or gratitude
• Pray on behalf of whoever was on the list this week, if I remembered (I was never good with names, so I almost always dropped in a generalized “and please attend to all those who are sick or in poor health” instead)
• Pray for my enemies, that they would stop persecuting me (this was a repeated request while I was in the public school system—one that was never granted)
• Thank the eternal for any consideration given to the prayers sent up on behalf of others
• Pray that I would make it into the Place of Safety, and repent again for any outstanding sins
• Pray for the kingdom to come soon, but all in god’s time of course, wouldn’t want to rush god after all
• Beg forgiveness if I had overstepped any bounds during the course of the prayer
• Thank the lord of hosts for attending to my prayer
• Amen, rub the stiffness out of my knees, and I’m good for another eight hours

Well, that was how mine always went.