When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer.

SUPERSTITION su.pɜr'stɪ.ʃən noun. Belief or practice based on a false idea of cause and effect. Usually faith in magic, luck, karmic consequences, junk science, or ignorance. Sometimes irrational fear of the unknown.

2. Belief or practice held despite reasonable contrary evidence.

[Superstitious su.pɜr'stɪ.ʃəs adjective.]

Obviously the title comes from the Stevie Wonder song. (And if you don’t know it, you’ve been deprived. That bassline alone makes it a classic.)

Christians might claim we’re not superstitious: We trust Jesus, not circumstances! But spend any time at all among us, and you’ll find this claim to be utter rubbish. In my experience, Christians are generally more superstitious than pagans.

A lot of this comes from dark Christians who are entirely sure devils are lurking under everything they don’t like. I grew up among such people. Some of ’em actually tried to teach me rock ’n roll makes people extra receptive to demonic possession, because the backbeat runs contrary to the human heartbeat. (It doesn’t; that’s stupid.) They had lists of all sorts of things which make people extra receptive to devils: Your radio, your television, your phone, your computer; certain books, certain movies… The public library is just teeming with critters eager to jump us, if these folks are to be believed. And no they’re not.

Some of it comes from Christians who were taught by young-earth creationists that we can’t trust science. So they don’t. But that leaves ’em open to believing all sorts of junk science—all of which is created by quacks, charlatans, fearmongers, and liars. They give people a false sense of “wellness” when in fact they’re not well at all. They get Christians to shun vaccines, avoid medication, fear psychiatry, reject basic treatments, refuse blood transfusions, and replace tried-and-proven methods with vitamins, herbs, oils, scents, homeopathy, and “eastern medicine.” (Which, more correctly, is pagan “medicine.” Y’ever notice how many doctors in the United States were born in Asia? Easterners believe in science!) It’s the same crap witch doctors tried in Jesus’s day—and left people so plagued with evil spirits, Jesus might’ve had to do more exorcisms than cures.

Some of it comes from Christians who have no idea how God talks to us. Often their churches never taught ’em, and sometimes don’t even believe God talks. So they had to figure it out on their own, and of course they’ve guessed wrong. Or they found some pagan ideas about how “the universe” speaks to us, gave ’em a try, they seemed to work, and that’s become their go-to method for “reading the signs,” interpreting the clues God supposedly leaves us in nature. Thing is, most pagan ideas are based on karma. So no surprise, a lot of the Christian practice of signs-interpretation is also based on whether we’re “worthy enough” for God to do stuff for us.

And some of it is just minor, silly things. Fr’instance my youth group once held a raffle, and just for evil fun I found us a roll of tickets whose numbers all started with 666. Many of the adults in our church were pleased to buy our tickets… till they found out what their ticket number began with. Some of ’em wouldn’t even touch the tickets. That number is a serious boogeyman to a lot of people.

But superstition betrays two things: People don’t know or trust God as much as they claim. And people are seriously deficient in commonsense. In some cases they suspend commonsense, ’cause they think they have to; they think they’re not allowed as Christians to trust science, or think it’s some sort of faith compromise.

But the reality is the Christians who tell them to do so, the people they look up to for spiritual guidance, are superstitious fools. So superstition gets spread instead of faith, even disguised as faith. Hence Christians get mocked for being morons.

It’s a cycle we’ve gotta break by using our brains: Demand evidence. Demand proof. Test everything. Same as we do (well, should do) with prophecy. 1Th 5.21 Don’t be gullible; be wise. Don’t be superstitious; persistently pursue truth.

Superstition ain’t the way.

In my article on curses I pointed out Christians are curse-proof. The Holy Spirit also makes us demon-proof, provided we stick to the Spirit and resist evil. Nor do we need to deduce God’s will with signs, augury, luck, lots, or any such thing. We’ve got bible, and we can hear God’s voice. We’ve been granted certainty, not guesswork. Why revert to guesswork?

Well like I said, some of us don’t believe God talks anymore. Or we know God talks, but we really don’t like what he recently said, so we’re looking for a second opinion. And it’s pretty easy to extract those second opinions from nature. You can even make them say whatever you prefer.

Notice how that’s exactly what happens every time somebody doesn’t like what western medicine has to say, so they reject it and embrace junk medicine. When western medicine and its doctors say, “You have a 10 percent chance,” but pagan medicine and its healers claim, “You have a 110 percent chance!” of course people follow whoever tickles their itching ears. When it doesn’t work—like businessman Steve Jobs discovered when he found out he couldn’t cure pancreatic cancer by only eating fruit—it might be too late for western medicine to properly treat you. Same as when measles destroys your child’s hearing because you were too superstitious to ever vaccinate them. When fear drives your decisions, stands to reason you’ll make very poor decisions.

Same is true of people who follow superstition instead of God. Who look for “signs” which point to his will, instead of listening to his voice, and double-checking it with prophets and the scriptures. Who don’t like what the scriptures and his voice tell them, which is why they’re searching so hard for an alternative voice—as if God even has an alternative voice.

The first step away from superstition is to reject all these irrational fears. They don’t come from God! God is love, and there’s no fear in love. 1Jn 4.18 There’s no superstition in the light. Only the dark. Come out of the dark.