Are Christians very superstitious?

I’m a bass guitar player with my primary music genre being classic rock. Now, I’ll bet some of you want to take me to task for playing “the devil’s music,” but trust me, I’m spiritually cognizant of what I do and don’t play, and yes, I know/play a good chunk of Christian music too.

Anyway, the other day I learned to play Stevie Wonder’s song Superstition, which starts like this:  

Very superstitious writings on the wall
Very superstitious, ladders 'bout to fall
13-month-old baby, broke the looking glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good thing is in your past

And then comes Wonder’s advice:

When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way

I doubt any of us disagrees with that counsel. If life teaches us anything, it’s that — most times — consequences exist for being wrong, so we should strive to thoroughly understand what and why we believe and practice what we do. This applies to all areas of life, including religious faith.

Ah, but there’s the rub, say skeptics of religion (and especially Christianity), who equate the faith with one big vat of superstition driven primarily by fear. In the same way a superstitious person avoids breaking a mirror, drawing the number 13, walking under a ladder, etc., critics say religious people have trepidation over offending some deity and thus do everything possible to acknowledge them, adhere to their commands, or stay out of their way.  

We see a quick example of this in the book of Acts where Paul begins his address on Mars Hill by saying: “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects” (Acts 17:22). Some Bible translations render the Greek term “very religious” as “superstitious” because Paul goes on to say: “While I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD’” (vs. 23), which the translators see as the Athenians being afraid of failing to acknowledge and offending some god they didn’t know.

Webster’s dictionary addresses just this kind of thing with its definition of superstition: “A belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation; an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition; a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.”

The fearful side of Webster’s definition is picked up by many religious skeptics, such as David Hume, who wrote, “Religion (i.e., “superstition”) is a source of fear and anxiety.” One of his philosophical forerunners, Baruch Spinoza, said the same thing: “Superstition is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear.”

You have to (somewhat) give these guys a break for thinking this way, where Christianity is concerned, because for those either willingly or unknowingly ignorant of the Gospel and the overarching theme in Scripture of God’s love and grace, the Bible can devolve into a seemingly endless list of commands and “or else!” threats. And that can make it pretty scary.

However, properly understood, Scripture reveals the faith to be absolutely antithetical to superstition. While superstition thrives on unfounded fear (of bad luck, curses, or unseen forces), biblical faith confidently rests in God’s rule over all things (i.e., His sovereignty) and His benevolence. The “fear of the Lord” spoken of in various places (e.g., Prov 1:7) is not a fear of retribution but of failing to please someone who has shown great love and care for you.

At a high level, superstition looks to replace trust in God with fear, godly wisdom with signs, a loving relationship with ritual, and God’s sovereignty with formulas. Superstition does its best to, as Jude says, “creep in unnoticed” (vs. 4) to the Christian life and takes many forms.

Some believers wear crosses, thinking they protect them. The Israelites tried treating the Ark of the Covenant as a lucky charm like that in battle and were soundly defeated (1 Sam. 4:3-11). Others turn prayer into a ritual of fear (pray or no soup for you!)

Then you have Christians who equate success with God’s approval, which paints their circumstances as superstitious moral omens. Next comes the faith-based formulas you’ve heard from plenty of the health-and-wealth chatterboxes: “If you give X, God must give you Y”; “Say this verse and God is obligated to…”, all of which regard faith as a spiritual transaction.

All these and others like them can spiral downward quickly, resulting in the kind of walking-on-eggshells fear Hume and Spinoza wrote about. To avoid that, do your best to remember that Christianity offers liberation from such superstitious activities by calling people away from fear-driven ritual and toward a rational, moral, and relational understanding of reality grounded in a God who can be known, questioned, and trusted.

So, that being true, live your Christian life as Stevie Wonder sang: Superstition ain't the way.