In the second half of WWII, the US Marines landed in Melanesia, a rather primitive part of the world at that time, to set up bases in the fight against the Japanese. To the confusion of the locals, these men did not seem to do much real work, but rather they appeared to do little but march around most of the day, and when they needed anything, a great metal bird would drop things out of the sky for them. The Melanesians concluded that it was the marching that caused the great gods of the sky to drop these gifts for them. It is for this reason that when you visit these places today, you may see the locals marching around with bamboo sticks in their arms, singing songs similar to the marines, trying to appease the sky gods to drop more bounty for them.
In fact, these “cargo cults,” as they have become known, are so well developed in some regions that they meet each Friday in small “chapels” to sing the sacred songs of the US Marines. Some areas even have wooden airplanes that act as sacred shrines in order to win favor with the gods that provide all the modern items they are hoping to receive.
Yes, it’s strange and naive at the same time, but it is not really that different from how many of us act today. We all have rituals which we perform in hopes that they will lead us to success. Some people don’t step on sidewalk cracks, others sing only certain songs at Christmas to get a connection with God, and others believe that one cannot speak about the dead without bringing bad occurrences on themselves.
Oddly, one of the most common rituals worldwide is to knock on wood. Strangely, some variation of this ritual is in almost every culture on the planet. In some countries, one needs to knock on wood to avoid bad luck, some to receive good luck, some need to do it after they say something bad about another person, and in others, after they say something good about a person to keep that good from leaving them. In other countries, the knocking needs to be on the top of a table, while others require you to knock on the underside of the table. In Poland, the wood you knock on cannot have paint on it, while in Norway that is not so important. In Italy, you knock on wood after you have seen an undertaker so that the same fate does not happen to you.
There are countless variations but almost all cultures have some ritual dealing with wood and knocking which may indicate that it goes back to a time when all of mankind shared a common culture and set of beliefs.
The truth is we are always grasping for some connection, where what we do has a bearing on what happens to us. We all live in a world where the events that happen in our lives can appear to be random and so we try and control these “events” as much as is possible.
It is this notion of appeasing God that gets us into doing rather foolish things. We try and create connections between God’s blessings and rituals which have no bearing on those blessings happening. Which makes us just as crazy as the Melanesians. Rather we need to understand what actually brings God’s favor into our lives.
Proverbs 21 tells us that “to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable than sacrifice.”
Colossians 3 says, “work heartily…knowing you will receive the inheritance as your reward”
These are the things that bring God’s favor into our lives. Yes, sometimes there is a delay between our actions and His reward, but He promises us that He is a rewarder of His faithful ones.
