Chinese believe in luck, or fortune, or if you may karma. We realize that we are not in control of reality and are at the mercy of the forces of the universe. Yet at the same time we want to believe that someone or something out there is lining things up for us, because we don’t want to be hopeless.
The problem with fortune is that first, it is impersonal, and second that it means there is also misfortune. We are still at the mercy of this cosmic power, but it does not care about any of us. In fact, the more we come to know fortune, and so look forward to it, the more we fear misfortune, and become even more desperately hopeless when it inevitably comes. It is impersonal, it does not care. We have no control.
And of course, that is why Chinese have all sorts of superstitions and means to calculate and optimize fortune. Yet the more we try to grab onto it, the more we are driving ourselves into depending on it. We become more anxious about losing it just the same.
Instead, as Christians, we believe in a loving God who holds all things in His hand. He is in control and He knows what we truly need to grow in love and in freedom. He does not give us fortune, but His blessings instead. He blesses with good things to cheer us and encourage us. but sometimes He also allows bad things but with a hidden blessing: like pains from mistakes to teach us to renounce evil, wounds from others’ mistakes to teach us forgiveness, sickness to teach us compassion, death to not attach to this world’s values but to be always ready for eternal life. We learn not to be attached to such unreliable and impersonal a thing as good fortune, but to trust in God whom we come to know to be trustworthy from experience.
If you were to ask me about good fortune, if it actually exists, I would rather believe in God, who knows me thoroughly, whom I come to know more and more, who has the best interest for me, because He is my father and I am His son.
Philosophically speaking, of course, there is no such a thing as luck or fortune. They are simply consequences of numerous causalities that seemingly happen to line things up for me. We find it random because we cannot see them all. But there is a God who sees them all, and constantly makes use of them for our good as mentioned above. So let’s trust in God instead.