Wholly Bible: A View from the Pew

Republic of Superstition

By RAY WADDLE

 Visiting New York City last weekend, I stopped at a corner deli for a smoothie. The line at the counter coiled around and spilled out the door. Everyone was buying extra lottery tickets -- lots of hurry and worry in the air. What was going on?

 Then someone in the store reminded me. The date was 7/7/7, the luckiest day of the century.

 That explained it. You can tell when gambling is on people’s minds. They look impatient,
irritated, not particularly lucky. (In sports bars on NFL Sundays, you can always spot the
gamblers. They’re the anxious ones, fretting about point spreads, even when their favorite
team is winning.)

 On 7/7/7, even churches pushed their luck. I heard of Christian organizers who hoped to pack stadiums with believers who’d pray for the world on this luckiest of days.

 Somewhere along the line, America became a gambler’s den, a republic of superstition. Legal
lottery is now a matter of public policy in nearly every state. It’s a “painless” way to raise taxes, because the people who buy lottery tickets are largely lower-income citizens without political power.

 Casinos are a festive way to avoid the grown-up work of reforming tax codes to make them more progressive and less burdensome on the poor. (Against the tide, the United Methodist Church has long been an opponent of gambling.)

 There is theological fallout to this casino culture, where people get by on wishful thinking, and poker intensifies an every-man-for-himself mentality. Belief in luck and superstition rises. Belief in God’ providence slips away.

 What’s the basic difference? Providence involves a certain level of trust in God’s creation, trust in the gifts and talents God gave us, trust that it will all turn out divinely right in the end. “The Lord is the upholder of my life,” Psalm 54 announces.

 Belief in luck depends on the secret idea that I can manipulate reality by conjuring numbers and dreaming hard of hitting the jackpot. It is making us a nation of losers.

 Belief in luck and chance and fate is understandable enough in an era when church teaching and Bible literacy have trouble competing with celebrity worship, fear of random terrorism and suspicions that society won’t protect its vulnerable members and underdogs. People are looking for that extra edge just to get through the day.

 However, since 7/7/7, I’ve noticed no news of anyone hitting the big numbers that day and striking it rich. It wasn’t a lucky day for me anyway. That smoothie gave me stomach cramps. I only got better six days later. The date? Friday the 13th.

--Columnist Ray Waddle, based in Bethel, Conn., is author of Against the Grain: Unconventional Wisdom from Ecclesiastes.