The very title of Ousmane Sembene's God's Bits of Wood reveals the religious beliefs of the book's characters. Let's look at this in more detail.

The title comes from a reference to one of the characters, Houdia M'Baye, as having “nine of God's bits of wood,” nine children. This little phrase actually shows a great deal about the people's religious beliefs. First, they do not believe in counting people. This is bad luck. People are not objects to be counted but individuals. Furthermore, individuals come from and belong to God. Houdia's children are a gift from God, and she recognizes that. But they are also little bits of wood. Here is humility. People recognize that they are human beings, nothing much at all in the grand scheme of things. Yet they still belong to God. Even though they are just little bits of wood, they are valuable little bits of wood, and they can make a difference in the world.

The characters blend traditional religious beliefs like this one with the Islam that they adopted many years before. Niakoro, for instance, mentions learning “some verses of the Koran, for our prayers.” The characters also offer praises to God when good things happen, like when no shooting comes even though they expect it to. Yet they know that, as El Hadji Mabigue says, “The designs of Providence are unfathomable,” and they are ready for anything.