Sneaky Superstition
Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, ' You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?' (Acts 13:9-10 NIV)
There are two classes of men who appear to have come the nearest to getting deliverance from the bondage of superstition: the scientist who has developed a mentality that accepts nothing that cannot be proved and the philosophical skeptic who has taught himself to discount the supernatural. By denying the existence of the spiritual they reduce their hopes and fears to the ordered operation of the natural, but that seems too high a price to pay for their freedom.
With the same broom they use to sweep out banshees, wraiths and apparitions, they also sweep away angels, heaven and (may we reverently say) God Himself. Along with these go belief in prayer, fear of retribution and hope for a future life. All of which is a very unscientific and extremely irrational way to proceed, if you ask me, and especially significant since the very ones who take that way boast above everything else of their scientific minds and their rationality. The man who, in order to get rid of the fear of black cats, must also rid himself of the fear of God is a victim of his own ignorance as surely as the man who nails a horseshoe over his door to bring good luck or carries a horse chestnut in his pocket to ward off an attack of the miseries. Neither man is acting rationally.
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Superstition is a child of credulity and thrives on a diet of half-truths and error. It sneaks into the assembly of the saints as did the man without the wedding garment, and unless there is someone present with the gift of discernment, it manages to pass as a true child of faith. But superstition and faith are alike only as a mushroom and a toadstool are alike; one is good nutritious food and the other contains a dangerous poison.
Prayer
Father, grant me discernment to clearly distinguish between superstition and faith in You.
Thought
Superstition is incidious and deceptive. It can sneak into the believer's life in things such as the use of certain words, phrases, positions in prayer; particular numbers; even the special placement of the Bible in a room.
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