Getting Beyond Folk Religion
Aug 27th, 2008 by ljkim
There’s a kind of religion that anthropologists loosely term “folk religion.” It includes lots of regional superstitions… In parts of Asia you don’t call babies cute, otherwise the evil spirits may attack, so you are supposed to say “oh how ugly!”
But there is a lot of folk religion within organized religions as well. For example: In many “Buddhist” countries people go to the Buddhist temple to pray for material wealth and prosperity. To which, if I were Gautama Buddha, I’d be slapping my hand against my forehead exclaiming “Doh!” (Buddhist teachings are not even remotely related to gaining material wealth).
Likewise, in “Christian” societies people insist on bringing pine trees indoors and teaching children the fear of disappointing Santa Claus. Obviously this has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Bible, but after a few generations the association is so ingrained that people will argue “freedom of religion” to display brightly lit pine trees in public. “Doh” yet again!
Most people can see the silliness (and the harmlessness) of “Christmas Trees,” and I’m not trying to do away with them, but all this is to point out that it’s easy to allow non-Gospel to piggy back on our understanding of true Gospel. Just the way computer viruses can attach themselves to the end of files, or the way in Congress items can be attached to bills to pass unrelated legislation on the coattails of important legislation – folk religion, superstitions, nationalism, etc…can attach itself to your understanding of God. And chances are you don’t realize how silly it is.
Millions of Catholics once believed it was wrong to hear mass in a language other than the “original” Latin (even though none of the Bible was originally written in Latin) – Anglican Christians thought it was wrong (at first) to worship God outdoors, even though Jesus’ most famous sermon takes place at a mountainside. And chances are you hold some folk religious notions as well – which I won’t point out right now – Instead I just want to point out that perhaps what matters to God is for you to connect with Him, in a real way, apart from all the silliness.
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These superstitions seem easy to disprove to people and convince them that they are just superstitions. Yet we have false ideas about God that are less far fetched but are obviously superstitions and lies. The one that seems to be the most harmful “superstition” is that we dont need God’s forgiveness that has been offered to us through Jesus. It seems that no matter what people tell us, even if they utterly convince us that we do need forgiveness and that we are pretty bad people the superstition becomes real to us again.
If other supersitions are able to be discarded, why is it that we can’t discard the ones that hurt us most? Isn’t that a little contradicting?
Harmless superstition= Easy riddance
Harmful superstition = Seemingly impossible riddance
Hmm good points…
I wonder if the some of the “harmful superstitions” aren’t harmful in part because they are difficult to get rid of…
But I also wonder if any superstition is easy to get rid of… Usually the the obvious ones are the ones other people have. Just the way the most obvious mistakes (and therefore the dumbest ones) seem to be the ones *other* people make.
Some folk religion is so beyond silly, to the point of cultivating godly virtue, that it’s not even funny.