Good Luck, Really?

Which god gives his or her loyalists good luck? Or is luck today like the comics, where agnostics draw upon the buried past to feign themselves cultured? Have you found yourself wishing good luck on a friend lately? It sounds innocent enough, but is luck worth propagating? Let me reel in the questions; par four is already a fairly long fairway for a double bogey writer to hike with a set of clubs on his shoulder and a machete at his hip. "Why the machete?" you ask. To cut things...like you never know when you’re going to find a pit viper in the bushes or a tree sapling in the way of the green. If you’re up for a challenge, follow me off the lawn and into the roughage.

The topic at hand revolves like a cyclone around the usage of words and their meanings, and if it’s difficult to hit the green on a windy day…well, you’ll get what I’m saying, it’s rather impossible and pointless to go golfing when houses are being stripped of their roofs…i.e. words are being stripped of their meanings.

If YHWH is a jealous elohim, mighty one, which he is (Exodus 20:2-5), giving credence to the gods of luck, whether they are currently worshipped or mere objects of antiquity, is a matter to be taken seriously. Golf translation: the rule book states that there’s a two-stroke penalty for hoping in luck.

Counterpoint: the last time I said, “good luck,” I left the gods out of it. Yes, I see, but that’s the tornadic cyclone that makes words lose their meanings. Where did luck originate? What meaning does it still convey? More drastic questions, I know, but these have present answers. I’ll grant that most people use the term “good luck” agnostically, but there's some rather real dirty downlow on the mighty ones, the gods, that have risen to popularity throughout history, some surviving until today:

• The luck gods of Japanese mythology

• The Roman goddess of luck and fortune

• The Greek goddess of fortune, prosperity, and luck of a city or people

• The Hindi goddess of good luck, prosperity, and beauty

*Names intentionally omitted (Exodus 23:13)

And this short list could be much longer if it included the many charms, symbols, and superstitions that surround this turbulent topic.

If you look at the general usage of the term “good luck”, I believe you’ll come to a similar conclusion, that the sentimental communiqué is intended to generally share hope for someone to achieve the best outcome of something. But in what or in whom is this hope placed? In nothing? Nothing is rather hollow. Or possibly the communiqué is supposed to be a twisted hint of doubt, as in the the sardonic phrase “good luck!” whereby the giver is hoping to convey their lack of confidence in the action about to be performed. That doesn’t sound good either. Quagmire! What do we mean by good luck if it’s either empty or mocking? Do we mean what we say? Aye, more questions!

Should we bless our friends with luck as whole Bible believing Christians? Me? Who me? Answer? Okay. Instead of lip-servicing luck, why not call your tongue into check and mean what you say (Psalm 39, James 3). That probably sounds a bit harsh, but it’s the challenge I have for you, that I have taken and have found refreshing, to censor empty words. That is to say, abandon the words luck and fortune and find thoughtful alternatives! Not because the sentiment is wrong—though if you bought me a Georgia hot chocolate, we could sit in a fancy clubhouse after a round of eighteen and casually debate whether agnostically wishing luck on someone is a sin. Quite the opposite, the intentions are right, but the words are lacking substance. Disclaimer: if you abandon the hobby of blindly driving luck down the fairway, you will initially find that your alternative golf balls hook and slice like an amateur’s, into the roughage, where I usually play. However, after a few failed attempts and some practice, you will also find yourself meaning what you say, and your vocabulary will grow like the fairway grass instead of slipping like most pop culture vernacular does.

What other words have hit the pop culture limelight and lost their original meaning? I’ll let you answer this last one. Please leave your answer in the comment section below.

Keep censoring (good luck),

JH

P.S. I feel like Sméagol, arguing with myself.

Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash