Hungry Games

In a recent NYT piece, Matthew Hutson cited a study led by the psychologist Kenneth Pargament of Bowling Green State University which found that students who saw a negative event as 'part of God’s plan' showed more growth on the other side of the experience. Wrote Hutson, "They became more open to new perspectives, more intimate in their relationships and more persistent in overcoming challenges."

The findings of the study are unsurprising to Christians, but Hutson's reference to the study is disappointing. Why? Because he includes it with knocking on wood or carrying a lucky rabbit's foot as examples of "magical thinking."

He's sympathetic to these habits of mind. "Some level of belief in the supernatural — often a subtle and unconscious belief — appears to be unavoidable, even among skeptics," he writes, "One study found that a group of seemingly rational Princeton students nonetheless believed that they had influenced the Super Bowl just by watching it on TV."

Though it misrepresents reality, he says superstition "offers psychological benefits that logic and science can’t always provide: namely, a sense of control and a sense of meaning."

And, while such thinking is fundamentally an illusion, the confidence we get from this false sense of control helps us perform better. So, golfers who were given a ball and told that it had previously performed well drained 35 percent more of their putts than when using a "regular" ball.

"So," concludes Hutson, "to believe in magic — as, on some deep level, we all do — does not make you stupid, ignorant or crazy. It makes you human."

Sympathetic commentary on irrational thinking always strikes me as sad. And when the sympathetic defense includes talk of God as part of irrational thinking, it also strikes me as misguided.

For one, it's sad. Hutson is saying that the universe as it is--chaotic and random--is intolerable and that all these superstitions give us the illusion of order and and a (fake) sense of control. He is saying, "We happened to spring up in a universe unmindful of our existence, and if we can briefly ignore the psychic terror of this stark truth by chanting a mantra or rubbing a lucky talisman between our fingers, well, let's not be too hard on ourselves. It's a lie but, you understand, it's a useful lie. So, now that we, the wise, have told you this, try to continue to enjoy the confidence and improved performance you once got from your silly rituals when you believed in their potency. Carry on--if you can."

Two, it's misguided to include belief in God along with belief in a lucky rabbit's foot or a charmed golf ball as all examples of "irrational" thinking.

It would be better to say that our all-too-human superstitions reveal a hunger that should set us on a search for sustaining food. C.S. Lewis put it this way in his 1949 sermon, "The Weight of Glory"--

A man’s physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called “falling in love” occurred in a sexless world.

Hunger means we have a real need for food. I suppose one could say that my desire for a juicy steak is fundamentally the same craving as felt by malnourished inner-city children who nibble on lead-laced paint chips. But to say that paint chips cannot satisfy that craving is no argument against my steak.

 

Go here for my commentary on a book that covers some of the same ground (John Geiger's The Third Man Factor)