It’s Friday the 13th and I suspect there is not a one of you that woke up scared because of that fact. Some of you, no doubt, had other things to worry about, other fears to face. But that “unlucky” combination of a Friday on the 13th of the month has pretty well lost its grip on us. We’re moderns, not like our superstitious forbears with their rabbits’ feet, four-leaf clovers, and salt over the shoulder tossing. We look down our noses at those poor benighted hayseeds farther down our family tree.
Except that we’re just as superstitious, if not more, than they were. Most every skyscraper in America, if it reaches that high, misnames all its floors from the 13th upward, calling the 13th the 14th, the 14th the 15th ad nauseum. Our commercial airplanes make the same kind of mistake with respect to their row numbers. All of which pales in comparison to our temples of superstition, casinos. When I was a child, if you wanted to gamble legally you had to travel to Nevada. I remember when Atlantic City, in its bid to save itself, sold itself into the fickle hands of fortune, legalizing gambling.
Then, the floodgates opened. Today there are six states bereft of casinos. Why? Casinos exist because their patrons believe in luck. Any gambler, from the well-trained blackjack player to the old woman chain smoking Lucky Strikes, guzzling watered down whiskey sours and tugging on the bandit’s one arm knows the odds favor the house. That’s how they make money. They literally cannot lose, given enough time. The only reason then to gamble there is if you believe somehow you can beat the odds. Which is as superstitious a belief as knocking on wood. Just a lot more expensive.
Partly to blame, I suspect, is evolution. It too is wildly superstitious lunacy that is catechized into the nation’s children at state schools. It not only says that it’s possible to beat the odds given enough time but that it’s impossible not to beat the odds, given enough time. It affirms, in turn, this fundamental, philosophical impossibility that likewise ties to gambling, that there is such a thing as a free lunch, that you can not only get more from less but can get everything from nothing. We live in a universe, according to naturalist scientists sitting in endowed chairs at highbrow institutions of learning, where not just wealth pops out of nowhere but universes do. If the nothing can spit out a universe with a big bang, why shouldn’t the slot machine spit out a truckload of quarters with a resounding cacophony of shrill bells and whistles?
He was a wise man who first said that there is nothing new under the sun. Our propensity to laugh at our ancestors for their lack of self-awareness is peak lack of self-awareness. We are just like them. Just as our children will be just like us. Change never comes from the inside because it always is what it is. Change comes when He invades what has always been His. Maranatha Lord Jesus.