SUPERSTITION

Lake County Mail, Issue 9, 23 July 1947, Page 9

SUPERSTITION

How quickly time passes! It will not be long before the commercial stationers will be displaying trays of Christmas cards once again, and we will be going into the shops to buy them. Watch someone look over a tray of such cards, and nine times out of 10 the* reproductions of great artists will be shuffled out of the way, and the type chosen will be one with a lucky emblem on it —a litter of black cats surrounded by a circle of horseshoes! Why are black cats lucky? I do not know, it depends on one’s point of view mainly. Try to persuade a mouse that a black cat is lucky, and what success have you? The mouse will be just as careful to keep out of the way of a black cat as of any other coloured cat! Who has not touched wood? (even if it is his own head). Who has never followed the “necessary ritual” of throwing some of the spilt salt over his shoulder? Or even persuaded an extra person to come to dinner for fear that there will be thirteen sitting down to a meal? Superstition is one of the devil’s strongest tools of destruction. Destruction of what? Of a true faith in God. It is no more incongruous to touch wood oi - perform any other ritual with a material thing than it is for the heathen to offer 'food or a gift to his wooden idol. St. Paul discovered superstition in Athens, where for fear of missing out any of the gods, the people had built an altar to the unknown god. Perhaps you think I am making a mountain out of a molehill. I am not. Superstition degrades every religion it touches. It breeds and nurtures false faith. People really come to believe in the power of these “ lucky charms ” or rituals to ward off evil, harm or danger. They come to rely in them, and God is subordinated, neglected and insulted! Oh, it is only in fun is it? Ask a devotee of superstitious practices whether they do it only in fun, or do they really believe that they have power to avert the danger. ‘ r, . ! Many of the practices arose out of true religion. They are abuses of something good in itself. “Touch wood,” for example, is from the ancient and true belief in the power of Christ’s death upon the cross to save and redeem. But it is the spiritual power of that redemption which has been abandoned and people have come to believe in the material power of wood to save them from harm. The cross, worn as a pendant which is fashionable to-day, is only another lucky charm when the wearer has no real spiritual belief in the efficacy of Christ’s death upon the cross\to save. Thirteen is accounted unlucky because one day long ago thirteen sat down to a meal on a Friday and before nightfall two. of those were dead, Jesus Christ had been crucified and Judas Iscariot hanged himself! Well, if it is wrung to have lucky charms, then surely it is wrong to have crosses on the church or other orna-' incuts. No, C is the motive that matters —the Cross on the spire points upwards to God, and through the‘Cross we attain and live up to the highest ideals. But modern idolaters, whether they worship the black-cat-god or the lucky-horse-shoe-god or any other, really come to believe in the power of the material, not of its Creator. What sort of a god is it that these people worship? Surely not a God of Love. Rather is he some inferior deity who snoops round with death or misfortune in his hand ready to pounce upon brides in green, or launching evil upon those unfortunate enough to break a mirror. It is degrading, heathenish and devilish, this modern cult of the superstitious. It is bestial, materialistic and idolatrous! It is the work of the devil. Are we to go on forever with this utterly base worship of false gods bringing disgrace upon God’s Holy, True, and Life-giving religion? “I am come that they might have life,” but it is no life when we go from day to day in the fear of danger and harm coming to us if we are unfortunate to break one of the' rules. Many Christians indulge in it in what they consider a harmless sort of way,

but like an avalanche it increases in size and power as it goes on, and once it gets hold of a person weak in faith, then everything else is subordinated to the worship of superstition. It is the kind of God we worship that in the end determines our character, shapes our destiny and directs our active life. “I am not what I think I am; hut what I think, that I am.” “ I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious,” said St. Paul, to the people of Athens. Surely the modern Paul would say the same of modern youth. —Philip C. Williams.