Comments on: Tales of Ãœber Devotions

By: Sims

Sims — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:44:13 +0000

I think in one of his books he tells the story of how he was led to pull over and get out of the car and kneel and pray. The only reason I remember it is because he said it was in California (my state) and there were palm trees.

By: Don

Don — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 04:40:33 +0000

I believe answered prayers are based more on those with “short accounts” than anything else.

You have to check your Spiritual Credit Scores to see if you qualify to get your prayers answered today or if you have to build up some additional Spiritual Credit in order to have them answered.

(At least that’s the way it was always presented in the Fundie Bunker I was attached to.)

By: Big Gary

Big Gary — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:40:58 +0000

Maybe prayers are answered on a first-prayed, first-served basis. If you wait until noon to make your supplication, you’ll be way down the queue.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:33:09 +0000

@alm517 and charlene I too was required to do daily devotions and turn in a personal journal for a Bible class at my christian high school. I told the teacher who was also the principal that I would not be handing in a journal to be graded. When he asked why not, I told him that I wasn’t having daily devotions and to turn in a journal that stated otherwise would be lying. He said that if I didn’t turn in a journal I would get a maximum of a C in the class. I took the C. Interestingly enough, now years later that class has come back up in conversations with classmates of mine. Those who got an A and were clearly the favored fundies in the class have now admitted that they often made up the entries in their journal to get the A and to not be on the bad side of the principal. I love the C I got in that class.

By: charlene

charlene — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:30:13 +0000

@alm517, that is too funny. We had to pass out a tract a week to get a passing grade for bible class at my school. Needless to say, I refused on principle. My parents got a letter stating why I wasn’t getting passing grades. Also, we were made to listen to Jack Hyles preaching on cassette tape and write a report on the sermon. I was hard pressed to write anything substantial, and still got an A on the report. That was the easiest A I ever got. I am someone who has to work for an A and I felt that those A’s that I earned in that class was an insult to my education and intelligence. Maybe that should be the next post added to this site.

By: alm517

alm517 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:53:24 +0000

At my Christian school we were required to do devotions and turn them in for a grade in Bible class, not for quality of course but as per usual with fundies they were concerned with the quantity.

By: Don

Don — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:26:06 +0000

Oh, and don’t forget, that we have to be clean before God so that we can pray at a moments notice. If we don’t keep short accounts with God we will find ourselves unable to pray and be heard by God should a crisis come along and we need to pray right away. yep, preached from an IFB pulpit….

By: Darrell

Darrell — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:27:18 +0000

@Andrew: I was waiting for someone to say this which is why I purposely started out by saying “In Christianity it is widely acknowledged that periods of quiet reading, prayer, and meditation are a good thing for a personâ€™s spiritual state.”

It’s not “devotions” that are the issue. It’s the glorification of the UberDevotion as the unattainable standard by which we are made to feel that we are lacking because we do not rise at a certain time and spend certain hours in a specific type of devotional exercise.

By viewing devotions that way, a blessed thing turns into a weapon against those who are struggling.

By: Jordan M. Poss

Jordan M. Poss — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:14:17 +0000

But the fundy fallacy is that “good” devotions only take one form, an early-morning prayer and Bible-reading glut that lasts for hours at a stretch. Whatever happened to laborare est orare?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:07:39 +0000

Yeah, not gonna lie, this is one of the few posts that I disagree with on this website. I’m not saying fundamentalists don’t make too big a deal about devotions. I am saying that the entire point of the Christian life is a relationship with God, which manifests itself in what fundies call “devos.”

Devotions are awesome. And yes, it is wrong to brag about them, but they are vital to a good relationship with God.