Superstition; Breaking the First Commandment?

In Christian Social Ethics, much lingo gets thrown around to show and explain why the 10 commandments actually cover a whole range of ethical behavior that is actually much broader than what the specific commands refer to. Its actually a lot of fun to preach on, and this way of reading the commandments is old and rooted in tradition. Calvin, for example, took the whole Torah and divided into ten sections, each and every single law somehow coming under the "jurisdiction" or cover of one of the ten commandments.

In our study of the first commandment, we learned that "thou shalt have no other gods before me," covers the entire realm of spiritual allegiances. The positive "force" or impact of this command, from what I can remember, is that we should have allegiance, reliance, and beleif in the all powerful nature of God alone. The negative "force" or impact of this command is that we can not act or think in a way which suggests that we have any allegiances or concerns about other spiritual powers/forces or beings.

Now, I've had this ongoing debate with this nurse that I know about whether or not superstition counts as breaking the first commandment, because, it turns out, nurses tend to be quite superstitious. Ask any nurse about what happens in the hospital on a full moon. Ask any nurse about what's going to happen if you say something to the effect of, "I hope we don't have any more emergencies today," or, "I hope I don't get called in tonight..." It's like, if you say it, then you're jinxed and its gonna happen. So they do the whole knock on wood thing.

Now, in all fairness, this is usually done in a joking manner. Like, if you really pressured one of these nurses to come out and say that they really beleive that if you say such and such won't happen, then it will, they might deny it. But say that its a little bit more than a joke. Does this constitute breaking the first commandment?

I think it does. The implication is that there is some supernatural force that hears what you say and brings about certain events in response. To the extent that you avoid saying things in order to (you think) prevent the unfortunate from occuring, I think a person is showing allegiance to a supernatural power. Whether or not this supernatural power is real or unreal is of no consequence. Presumably, when the law said, "no other gods," the implication was that there Are other "gods," whatever they may be (thats another conversation). But you're not supposed to have them period.

If a person dodges the 1st commandment question by saying that the "one" who brings about the unfortunate experience as a result of having voiced it is God, then I would respond that this beleif would constitute a breaking of the third commandment which governs the sphere of "language about God," because such a presumption is actually false (that God jinxes us when we verbalize something).