Exhorter Podcast
Welcome to the Exhorter Podcast where we aim to stir up love and good works, through bite-sized biblical discussion. This local effort of the Church of Christ located in Clovis California is hosted by Kyle Goodwin, Paul Nerland, Nate Shankels, and Jon Bradford.
Exhorter Podcast
48 - Not Superstitious, But A Little Stitious
Ever wonder why we have quirky rituals for sports games or high-stakes competitions? Are you guilty of patting your car dashboard before a road trip or avoiding ladders at all costs? We unravel these peculiarities, linking them to biblical teachings and how God views superstitions. Sharing a few laugh-worthy anecdotes we explore how superstitions affect our understanding of God's will.
Also, drawing from compelling narratives like the Philistines taking the Ark of the Covenant, we expose the pitfalls of tokenizing religion and blurring the line between religion and superstition.
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Welcome to the Exordr podcast, where you can stir up love and good works through bite-sized biblical discussion. It's Kyle and I with you here today. Kyle, what are we going to talk about?
Speaker 2:first we're going to talk about superstitions. I think it's something that's relatable to all of us and I can share a few examples. In my life there was a point in time where I was convinced that if I had a cup of coffee during a Seahawks game on Sundays, they would win. So I'd always try to find a cup of coffee, but when that wouldn't work I thought maybe it was a specific roast and I have to get like Pike's Place roast from Starbucks for them to win something from Seattle. It only works then Of course we all know that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:When I was a middle school basketball player, it was my red sweatband. I had a headband because the Trailblazers all wore headbands and I needed to wear that with my tall socks. That matched Made me look like a dork, but I thought that was also the key to my unlocking my secret potential was the tall socks and headband. And in high school, of course you all know, I gave up sports and was a major ban geek. And when I won districts on the tuba at the solo competition I realized I had apple juice that day. So at the state competition I brought like a whole gallon of apple juice with me because I thought that was. It had nothing to do with the hundreds literal hundreds of hours of practice and private lessons I took. It was all about having the right beverage on the day of the competition. It sounds so silly in hindsight, but in the moment it felt like that was giving me the edge. These other guys, they don't know. I've got apple juice with me today.
Speaker 1:We drinking coffee Tree top. We played the Patriots.
Speaker 2:No, we should have run the ball. No, someone else must have had better superstition than me. Yeah, I probably might.
Speaker 1:You know that's the thing is. I wore jersey every you know through all the major, major games, but we just always won, even if I didn't wear it. You know so.
Speaker 2:How did you hijack this about the Patriots?
Speaker 1:So superstitions or super being superstitious, you know what, what biblically can, can we kind of like really go at it.
Speaker 2:There are definitely some scriptures that make it clear God's feelings about superstitious beliefs in a particular um pagan customs and and things related to that. Um, like Deuteronomy, chapter 12, beginning in verse 30, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their God saying how do these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise. You shall not worship the Lord, your God, in that way, for every abomination to the Lord which he hates, they have done to their gods, for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command, you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away from it.
Speaker 2:So God was very clear to them when they went to conquer the land. He says the people you're driving out, the way they worship their God, is not the way you're going to worship me. What they do is their superstition. If we offer our children in the fire, we will have good and plentiful crops at harvest time. Don't do that. And they did. And God got really angry with them for it. And he also made it clear, um, john, what was the scripture you were talking about earlier, about uh, was it Necromancers?
Speaker 1:It's Leviticus 1931. Do not turn to mediums or Necromancers, do not seek them out and so make yourselves unclean by them. I am the Lord, your God, yeah.
Speaker 2:So um no tarot card readings or Ouija boards this Halloween right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So I mean there's a lot of superstitions in the world of kind of denomonic thoughts and influence and those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so it seems like one category which I don't think is really. We're not really.
Speaker 1:I don't think many people who are Godfinger and Christians are really thinking that you know, are getting out the Ouija boards to understand if you know they have luck or not Is anything more than just a gimmick or just kind of a joke?
Speaker 2:Should we still avoid them? Maybe that's a question so?
Speaker 1:what kind of superstitions are you talking about? What are some of those everyday superstitions that you?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, like I said, it's so relatable. I gave a few examples in my own life and I can give one from my modern life. I'm going to throw my wife under the bus a little bit here and, to be clear, we didn't design this episode specifically for our wives as the audience.
Speaker 1:They will think we did yes but that's our disclaimer.
Speaker 2:But after the last two years or so our Ford expedition has had a little hitch in the transmission. You know, at certain RPM levels it'll kind of hiccup a little bit and shudder and make you think, oh, don't fall apart. I've learned to avoid that pretty well. But every time we go on a long road trip I always get in the car, we say our prayer before we go out on the road and then I pat the dashboard and say, all right, car, just get us through one more road trip. And Jessica says don't do that, you're going to Jinx it. You're going to jinx it, you're going to Now it's going to break down. It's like is it really? You know, that's kind of an example of a superstition. And so we get lots of just common place examples, things like don't walk under a ladder. I think the roots of that one just go back to the Egyptians veneration of triangles. But that's just common sense. Don't walk under a ladder, because if you're tall like me, you'll hit your head or someone will drop something on you.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, that's OSHA compliance, right there, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or don't open an umbrella indoors. I don't know. I grew up in Seattle.
Speaker 1:We open umbrellas indoors all the time, but you open it up to go outside, right, but it won't fit right through the door.
Speaker 2:Well, that was largely because my understanding is the umbrella spring mechanisms and some of the earliest designs could be quite dangerous In 18th century London, when metal-spoked waterproof umbrellas began to become a common rainy day site, their stiff, clumsy spring mechanisms made them hazards when they were open indoors.
Speaker 1:Like projectiles, they could malfunction.
Speaker 2:So that just seems like common sense. But other more common place ones are things like saying bless you. Why do you think we say bless you when we sneeze?
Speaker 1:Wasn't that go back to plague or times where people had a disease and you're literally wanting them to be blessed?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, oftentimes a sneeze could be thought of as a precursor to are you coming down with something, so it's a wish for good health. How stuff works? Their website explains it this way wishing someone well after they sneeze probably originated thousands of years ago. The Romans would say Jupiter, preserve you, or salve, which meant good health to you, and the Greeks would wish each other long life. The phrase God bless you is attributed to Pope Gregory the Great, who uttered it in the sixth century during a bubonic plague epidemic. So yeah, it does have some, maybe the force be with you.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's basically what we're saying, or live long and prosper. If we want to mention the better franchise.
Speaker 2:And then also we get the equivalent German term gazuntite, which literally means help.
Speaker 1:I just want to start saying that again. Like I'm going to bring gazuntite back. I should do that yeah.
Speaker 2:Or if you sneeze like my dad, you would say was that necessary? Give us a warning?
Speaker 1:first, yeah, with Taylor, it's like it was that even a sneeze, because they're fast and silent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've heard that before I remember looking at her one time saying bless you with a question mark, Like was that a sneeze, I mean?
Speaker 1:but when we really talk about it. We're talking about the whole jinx thing, the bad luck that knock on wood, right. Those kinds of things that we think at the end of the day. We think that some random things that happen to us might bring us bad luck, right yeah, and we talked about this, and my brain generally goes to the psychology of something because I love the world of psychology.
Speaker 1:So, when it comes to being superstitious, one of the reasons people think that we are superstitious or we kind of get in that mindset is our mind has been built I mean, they don't say built right Designed to detect patterns, right and everyday things, the chaos that happens in life.
Speaker 1:Our mind is designed in a way that we try to take random things and make sense of them, and so one of the biases that we're kind of built with is confirmation bias, and that just means that we search for or interpret things that confirm our preexisting beliefs and desires. Meaning, when something happens out in the world, we try to find a reason why that happened, and we usually assign some reason to it right away. So let's say, it's Friday, the 13th, right, and you spilled coffee on yourself. You're going to think well, man, it's a bad luck day. Friday the 13th spilled coffee on myself, or you failed a test or you got a flat tire. You're going to attribute that to a reason why that happened, and it's usually going to be around something that might have been unlucky, you know why, else would it?
Speaker 2:happen. I think some of this gets self-perpetuated too, like the Friday the 13th thing. You get it stuck in your head that it's a bad luck day, and it's almost like you set yourself up for it and it's almost like a cause and effect thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's the whole basis behind that bias, and the thing, though, is the funny thing is, if nothing happens to you on that day, and the day went well, your brain ignores it and it thinks well, I guess I was just lucky that one time, on Friday the 13th. Well, I still have to be vigilant and make sure that you know something doesn't happen. And so it's. The thing is, it confirms those beliefs, and those beliefs are generally supported by media, like Friday the 13th. It was a movie franchise, but it was a pretty. I don't know if you can connect the bad luck to mass murder.
Speaker 2:But I think some of the 13, the stigmas, with the number 13 comes to hotel, hotel floors.
Speaker 1:Like I mean we.
Speaker 2:It's well some of the theories.
Speaker 2:I've read suggests that it's that Judas was the 13th guest at the last supper, which I don't think. The Bible tells us there were only the 12 apostles in Jesus, necessarily, so that's a bit of an assumption, but I think that's where some of the origins come from. Is that the evil that Judas allowed into his life and that he was the 13th one? There's also some Norse mythology surrounding Loki not making a plug for the new season of Loki by any means, but just an interesting you know connection there.
Speaker 1:Sure the trickster though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you get these connections there.
Speaker 2:I tend to agree with your conclusions there. I feel like the reason we make these superstitions is it's a way of making the world make sense. Yeah, or taking our life is complex. How many factors do we have to try and calculate to make sense of the world? There's time and chance, just randomness. That's something that we can't even calculate for. There's the will of God, there's providence, there's the free will of mankind, there's the choices that we make, the choices that other people make. There's so many things in our control, out of our control. It's very confusing to try and make sense of all that happens to us on a day-to-day basis. So if we just boil it down to hey, if I say this prayer, if I hold this object, if I wear this article of clothing, my lucky hat.
Speaker 1:The rubbing, some talisman thing, the worry stone or lucky little thing, there we're putting some essential oils on my wrists.
Speaker 2:Sorry for the essential oil. I really didn't mean to alienate you all. You just boil it down to something that simple and it also it puts you in the driver's seat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we want to assign agency to things, as long as I do this, then I should be safe, right Something to understand why our brain does this, not to just say run with it, but to understand what it is so we can hack it. Our brain might do something. Naturally it might be designed to work in a certain way, and then understanding how our brain works means we can choose when to ignore it and why it's working that way. For example, this confirmation bias is linked, if you believe in evolution. They believe this is just built into us over time, causing effect. But I believe it's designed that way into us.
Speaker 1:God gives us a brain with these certain triggers or heuristics or ways that our brain basically switches on and off and comes to certain conclusions to help us out. And so an example I give of this one is you're out there on a plane, right and tall grass, and you hear large rustling in the grass beyond you. You could think you know that that might be just the wind hitting the grass and making a whistle. I'm going to think it's a lion. You could be right, it could be a lion and that it is a lion, it's always a lion.
Speaker 1:It's always a lion If.
Speaker 1:I hear grass rustling. It is a lion, well, especially out there in the Serengeti, or something, right? So the thought, though, is is that we were designed to try to attribute some sort of reason why something may be happening like that, to keep us safe, you know, if it is a wrestling grass, we're going to pay attention to it, maybe not go that direction, maybe be wary, because, well, lions wrestle I mean, actually, probably they don't, you know, they're pretty quiet. If they want to pounce us, they're going to pounce us, but our brains are designed in a certain way to do that. Now, that just means that we understand our brain looks to attribute a cause to something that happens, but we can choose then to ignore it. We can just understand that there are some things that happen in the world without causes and not for any reason, right, I mean, we understand that's the trigger for our brain, but it's not like some sort of supernatural, you know, cosmic presence that is trying to guide us in a certain direction.
Speaker 1:If I try to knock on wood to make something else not happen, that what's? That's like an idol, right? Then that's maybe the opposite of way of thinking about this, like I have control over it, or that wood over there has agency to bring me good luck, which has no agency at all. It's wood. You know it's not going to bring me anything, it's just our mind will be satiated by that act. But it does remind me of we're talking about a story in the Bible. It does remind me of you know, like this, like rubbing a magic talisman thing, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there's quite a few examples. I mentioned the one as we were kind of talking over the episode before we started recording. I mentioned one, but there's quite a few that come to my mind. The one I brought up was in 1 Samuel, chapter four, when the Israelites are fighting the Philistines and they get the bright idea let's take the Ark of the Covenant out there and march it before us. And they basically reduced God to that object.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like an Alexa. Hey, God, can you get rid of these Philistines for us? Thank you, you know like they can call down the will and control the will of God for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but God allowed them to be defeated by the Philistines. And the Philistines took the Ark and they were thinking very superstitiously because God's in their mind were geographical and they had captured the God of those people and they brought it back into the temple of their God, dagon. And it's just this hilarious story where they all start becoming sick, having problems, they go into the temple of Dagon in the head and the palms of his hands are broken off every morning over the threshold of his temple, and so they give it back to Israel. They take it back. It's plaguing us and it's humiliating our God Dagon.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, though, because, years later, zephaniah, chapter one and verse nine, would say in the same day, I will punish all those who leap over the threshold, who fill their master's houses with violence and deceit. Some believe that this leaping over the threshold is a superstition that was started by the Philistines because Dagon's head kept falling onto the threshold. So they would leap over the threshold as a superstition based on that experience. So just interesting one superstition might have made another superstition. But beyond that, jeremiah, chapter seven, you have destruction proclaimed against Jerusalem for all their injustice, for all their idolatry, and their answer is yeah, but we have the temple of the Lord and in Jeremiah seven they repeat it the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. That's basically them saying blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have the temple. It doesn't matter what we do, we've got the temple. And God says it doesn't matter that you have the temple, because you don't know the God that dwells in that temple. And so there's lots of examples like that Isaiah 58, they talk about how we did this fast in your name and didn't you see us? And God says I saw how you mistreated the poor and abused your workers and I saw those atrocities. I don't care about your fast, but they looked at it as if we do this thing.
Speaker 2:God should be on our side. And that's where the problem comes in today. Look, I think Ouija boards, tarot cards, necromancy, those aren't the kinds of things Christians really deal with today, but I think tokenizing elements of religion, and that's a fine line between religion and superstition. And we blur that line. If I say my prayers, if I go to church, I'm a good person. If I do my daily Bible reading, I'm a good person and God should be on my side. That's no different than how Israel said we got the temple of the Lord. We don't act like it, but we have the temple of the Lord. We have the Ark of the Covenant, that's enough. We got the lucky charm. We do the things, so God should be on our side.
Speaker 1:So if things don't work our way, though, I mean, should we not look and see how we're living in our life? Because I mean, with the Israelites in the Ark, I mean this was the problem. Like Samuel's sons, he just let them do whatever they wanted to do. Right, they were perverting the priesthood. You know they were not godly.
Speaker 2:That does a reason why God let the Philistines take the Ark of the Covenant.
Speaker 1:Right. So there is a cause and effect to some things. Should we, if things are going bad in our life, should we think whether we're right with God?
Speaker 2:We should always self-reflect in times of trouble, trial or hardship. We should do that in or good things right? Yes.
Speaker 1:I mean we should always self-reflect all the time.
Speaker 2:So when things are happening, good do we recount that as God, because Satan probably wants us fat and happy, to be honest.
Speaker 1:But I mean honestly if something happens good in our life, shouldn't we also attribute that to blessings from God? Like, why wouldn't we?
Speaker 2:Here's the problem, though, is what we're doing is we're putting ourselves in the driver's seat and trying to make sense of things that maybe we just can't make sense of to begin with.
Speaker 2:So when there is hardship or bad things happen, we should self-reflect. Sometimes it is a cause and effect. Sometimes and it doesn't always have to be as abstract as well I said this bad word and then I got a cavity. There's no strong connection there. Maybe God did that as a punishment, but probably not. But if it's something like I've been cheating on my wife and I got caught and now my world is falling apart, well, yeah, yeah, you should think about your actions and now the consequences. So when bad things happen, we should do some self-reflection.
Speaker 1:But we can take it too far, because I mean, if there's a passing in our family or something, we try to assign a reason to certain things that there may be not a reason to.
Speaker 2:Whether God caused it specifically to happen or God permitted it to happen by time and chance. Either way, God allowed it to happen and there is a lesson that we might be able to learn from.
Speaker 1:There's a lesson in all things.
Speaker 2:And here's the thing, though, is when we boil it down to superstition. We make the wrong assumption that what we think is best is what God thinks is best. If I do this, then my life will be good. We're making the assumption that God wants us to have a good, comfortable life, problem free, no money issues, no health issues, no friendship issues, no hardships.
Speaker 1:We're assuming that that's what God wants for us and we think that there's a pattern with it too. If I push this button or do this thing again, I should expect the same result, and that's not how those things happen. I mean, that's why they brought the Ark out there in the first place. They said they had the Ark with them in the previous battles. It helped them, so let's bring the Ark out again.
Speaker 2:How does that superstitious mindset, how does that fit in with what Jesus spoke to the church in Smyrna, revelation, chapter 2 and verse 9. There are works, tribulation and poverty, but you are rich, and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews, and they are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear any of these things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested and you will have tribulation 10 days. Okay, that's not a literal 10 days. That's for another discussion on Revelation. In fact, come to our Sunday morning Bible class here at the Clovis Church. Be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of life. This is the most incredible statement right there, and I think this helps me understand superstitions and helps me get out of that mindset. I can't make sense of everything that happens to me. I'm not eternal, I'm not all knowing, but God is. So my job is very simple Be faithful to Him. Did this happen because he caused it? Did this happen because someone else made a bad choice? Did this happen because I made a bad choice? I can reflect on those and sometimes it might be an obvious answer, but sometimes it might not be very clear why this thing happened. Am I in the driver's seat of what happens to me? I can control how I react to things.
Speaker 2:But look at these Christians in Smyrna. Sounds like they're pretty solid, faithful believers. They're doing the right things. And God says I'm not going to spare you. You're going to go to prison, you're going to be abused and a lot of you are going to die. Be faithful to death. But he promises them, I will give you the crown of life. So that's the key. There is just understanding that what I might want is not necessarily what God wants, and that's the mistake. I think of superstitions that good, comfortable, easy life, that's problem free. Sometimes God says no. I want you to have the opposite experience of that, because I'm trying to give you something bigger than a good life. I'm trying to give you a good eternity.
Speaker 1:There's a certain amount of this life, in this world that we're not going to know. The problem is we feel like we're owed or do that. So we keep searching, we argue, sometimes we get mad at the scripture or God or each other when we don't agree or we can't figure out how to understand something that's happened in our lives. So unfortunately, like you said, we were never promised answers in this life, necessarily, hopefully, in life thereafter. If I don't know sometimes I don't even know if we care to have the answers when we get to heaven, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So at the end of the day, when it comes to the superstitious mindset, we need to be careful that we don't bring that into our faith, like we read about some examples with Israel. Don't let things like regular prayer, bible reading, going to church, don't let those become the superstitious things that you do because you want a good life. But also don't interpret this episode as me saying that if your life is going good, then you've done something wrong. Sometimes we do get to enjoy things in this life and I think that's, to a degree, what God does want at times. But just don't forget the bigger picture here. This life is meant to be a testing, which means it's going to be hard at times and that isn't always going to make sense to us.
Speaker 2:Don't forget that Job is one of the longest books in the Bible and it's about why bad things happen to good people. The reason is it's not an easier short answer, so it's a long book. So the best advice I can give you if you see yourself with these trends of going through routines and assuming that means that God will be on my side, or I'll be safe or I'll be protected, or you're trying to make sense of the world. That's okay to a degree, but ultimately, the best advice I can give you is exactly what Jesus told the Christians in Smyrna be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of life. I think the best way I could rephrase that is from Frozen 2. Just do the next right thing when you can't make sense of the world. Just be faithful to God, even if that leads you to death. Just keep putting your trust in God. Just keep listening to him. Don't go to church, don't read the Bible, don't say your prayers. Don't do those things as mere routine or as some superstitious checkbox to keep you safe.
Speaker 1:That's not how this works. Do them because you're seeking godliness, exactly Well. Thank you, kyle, for this topic. This is fun. I love talking about this topic because it's a little lighthearted, but it is kind of a big deal to us in our lives, you know, because sometimes we want to attribute, you know, reason to things.
Speaker 2:John you should release this episode on Friday, the 13th next week.
Speaker 1:Yes, we should, I want to do it earlier than that. One of the scriptures that I was looking at that I really like is Colossians 2.8, and it says See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. Seek Christ, focus on him, focus on what we should be doing here and ignore all the other things that might distract us along the way.
Speaker 2:Now like, share and subscribe.
Speaker 1:Share this podcast with 13 other people 13 other people, you will have bad luck. That is a perfect way to do it, thank you. Did you ever see the Madden? Do you hear that Tom Brady won the Madden cover? He had the video. Did you ever see the video?
Speaker 2:Oh, is that about the Madden curse?
Speaker 1:Yeah it is about Madden curse, so he gets on the screen of the video and he says I don't think there's a curse. He walks underneath and a ladder and he sits there and breaks a mirror and like he does all the things you shouldn't be doing, he says I break all the curses. He actually had a decent year. That year I think they won the Super Bowl. So it was the. They broke the Madden curse. Tom Brady did it. Science seal delivered. There you go. You know any snarky thing to say about that?
Speaker 2:Tom Brady is the goat. I can't deny it. He's a goat, and he's a very handsome looking man too, and it's proof that you might be ugly now, but in your 40s you might look better. You might look better in silver fox.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:And you're a hundred percent sure we're recording 100 percent Nothing nothing is as deflating as getting like halfway through an episode, than being like I have to recreate all that energy again, yeah it happened one time and I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1:You know, deflating it is to be the one to do it.
