Go ahead, you can admit it: secretly, you’re a superstitious person.  Not flagrantly, perhaps.  It’s just that one little good luck charm, that one automatic gesture.  Some part of you believes that your favorite sports team is more likely to win if you wear that sweatshirt.  Or you wear your lucky tie to interviews.  Or you actually knock on actual wood.

Or you believe in bad luck.  You have the tiniest twinge of doubt when a black cat crosses your path.  You worry that if you wash your car, it’s going to rain, even if it’s not in the forecast.  You don’t say certain words out loud, for fear that you’ll jinx something.

Sometimes, persistent bad luck becomes something of a family in-joke.  For example, I never win at Mah Jongg.  Okay, correction: I rarely win at Mah Jongg.  But I also hold the record for biggest loser, by a long shot.

The rational explanation, of course, is that I don’t play well; I make poor decisions.  So we did a family experiment.  My mother, who is an excellent player, sat behind me to watch my every move.  The verdict: nope, he really does have crummy luck.  And thus a legend was born.

I almost never play the game anymore.  I don’t like to lose.

Nobody’s really certain how the superstition regarding Friday the 13th began.  (The day, not the movie series.  And for the record, I don’t understand the attraction of watching people in masks running around hacking people up.  Just saying.)  Some people apparently believed that bad things tended to happen more often on Fridays, and this got conjoined with the fear of the number 13.  All it takes is a few notable events of bad luck on the day to confirm the superstition.  For all you word buffs, there’s even a word for it: friggatriskaidekaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th (Scrabble, anyone?).

Does anyone really believe it?  It’s not that anyone’s out proselytizing people about the dangers.  But again, there’s that tiny twinge of doubt.  I don’t really think there’s anything to it, but what if I’m wrong?  Better be careful, just in case.  My mother used to get a little nervous when we would tell her we were traveling on Friday the 13th.  We stopped telling her.

There’s a sense in which superstitious belief is really a form of religion, even if we don’t recognize it.  Life is unpredictable; good things happen, and bad things happen.  All else being equal, we’d like to have a little more control over the outcome.  Did the nations surrounding ancient Israel really believe in all those local gods?  Did they really think that making an offering to this or that wooden or stone figurine would guarantee them fertility, or prosperity, or a good crop?

Maybe; maybe not.  But hey, it couldn’t hurt, right?

God had a word for that way of thinking: idolatry.

I’m not suggesting that we’re in danger of being struck by lightning if we knock on wood or avoid black cats.  But we might ask ourselves to what extent superstition sometimes masquerades as piety.  If I’m late for an appointment and pray for a parking space, is that true devotion and dependence, or superstition?  And if I miraculously get that space, what will I do next time, and why?

I don’t want to presume to prejudge the issue on the basis of behavior alone.  God is the one who sees the heart.  But let me suggest a spiritual alternative: we should make it our habit to do whatever we can to cultivate our trust in the providence and goodness of God, even in the face of what seems like rotten luck.  We can learn to take the long view: we don’t need to control our fate from moment to moment, not when a loving Father holds our eternal destiny.

Maybe I’ll even take up Mah Jongg again, and learn to enjoy the game.