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Bible Basics

By Bill Dillon

Gambling: The Wheel of Misfortune

Introduction

An estimated 57% of Americans gamble regularly. NBC news reported a few years ago that “gambling is the biggest business in the nation, bigger than the ten (10) largest corporations, including U.S. Steel and General Motors.”

Millions today are seeking excitement and thrills through the allure of gambling. From bingo to blackjack; from roulette to horse racing; from state lotteries to selling chances on a lawn mower; gambling is viewed by many as a way to fulfill all their dreams by riding on the wheel of fortune. But is gambling really the wheel of fortune or the wheel of misfortune?

Good morning. We trust all to be well with you.

Are you planning to attend worship services today? May I invite you to visit with the Mountain Home Church of Christ? Our church building is located at the corner of College and North Streets in Mountain Home.

You are invited to come with:

A Bible in your hand

A friend by your side

A smile on your face

A song in your heart.

Discussion

My friends, in the most recent Reader’s Digest (April, 1996), there appears an article that truly gives, in the language of Paul Harvey, “the rest of the story.” The article reveals that gambling, for all of its defenders, is not the wheel of fortune, but the wheel of misfortune!

The article is called “Gambling’s Toll in Minnesota” and the sub-title reads, “When a State Legalizes Gambling, Everybody Pays.” Here is more of what the article says:

“America is becoming a nation of gamblers. Once confined to Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Reno, gambling is now legal in 48 states — all but Hawaii and Utah — and casinos run full tilt in 24. Almost 100 million Americans bet $400 billion last year and lost $39 billion to the house.

“To win legal status, the industry promised some tax poor states a river of money for public programs. But along with the wealth came an alarming rise in suicides, bankruptcies and crime. Here is the experience of one state, where the first full-service casino was welcomed in 1988.”

The article goes on to detail Minnesota’s misery with gambling:

“In less than a decade, legalized gambling in Minnesota — $4.1 billion is legally wagered in the state each year — has created a new class of addicts, victims and criminals whose activities are devastating families. Even conservative estimates of the social toll suggest that problem gambling costs Minnesotans more than $200 million per year in taxes, lost income, bad debts and crime.

“Ten years ago only one Gamblers Anonymous group was meeting in the state; today there are 53 groups. According to research by the Center for Addiction studies at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, nearly 38,000 Minnesota adults are probable pathological gamblers. A 1994 Star Tribune/WCCO TV poll found that 128,000 adults in Minnesota — four percent — showed signs associated with problem gambling and gambling addiction.

The example of Jeff Copeland is given:

“Jeff Copeland, a 21-year-old from suburban Minneapolis, can’t go to college because he’s accumulated a $20,000 gambling debt. “It ruins your life”, he says. “And people don’t really understand. I thought about suicide. It’s the easiest way to get out of it.”

The police burden is now greater in Minnesota:

“Between 1988 — when the first of Minnesota’s 17 casinos began operating — and 1994, counties with casinos saw the crime rate rise twice as fast as those without casinos. The increase was the greatest for crimes linked to gambling, such as fraud, theft and forgery/counterfeiting.

The taxpayers tab is also noted:

“Taxpayer Tab. The list of violent gambling-related crimes is also growing. Redwood Falls police officer Derek Woodford was shot by a gambler from Gary, Ind., who had broken into a local bank after a day of gambling at Jackpot Junction in Morton. Woodford spent 13 days in the hospital recovering from 3 bullet wounds.

“Gambling has long been recognized, as well, as a root cause of embezzlement. In most gambling-related embezzlement cases, authorities say, the court file shows the same thing: no previous criminal record.”

The cost in terms of hidden suicides is entered into the picture as well:

“Other deaths that may be related to depression over gambling losses are not listed as suicides at all. “So often, when people talk about suicide, they say, ‘I’d just drive off the road. I’d drive into a tree,’” says Sandi Brustuen of the Vanguard Compulsive Treatment Program in Granite Falls, Minn. “They don’t want anyone to know they committed suicide, and they want the families to collect the insurance.”

“The suicide rate among pathological gamblers nationally is believed to rival that of drug addicts. Ten to 20 percent of pathological gamblers have attempted suicide, and almost 90 percent have contemplated it.”

The article concludes by correctly pointing out:

“Few of these problems have been documented as communities and states across the nation instead focus on gambling as a way to boost their economies and increase tax revenues. But for Minnesota the social costs of gambling are emerging in vivid and tragic detail.”

The observation made, in Minnesota and elsewhere, is that the gambling concept that was supposed to yield a financial bonanza for states and good, clean, harmless fun for players, has not worked as planned!!

My friends, gambling does not work financially nor socially, and it does not work spiritually!!! It is a social detriment, a financial failure, and a spiritual catastrophe.

Let me concentrate, for the remainder of this broadcast, on the spiritual problems involved with the gambling craze.

Someone may try and defend gambling by saying, “What’s wrong with it? Isn’t life itself a gamble?” There is a difference in a necessary risk and an unnecessary one.

In gambling you are talking about created risks with wagers and stakes. We are not referring to the risks a farmer incurs growing his crops. Floods, pests and droughts are not created risks — they are a part of the nature of things as long as the world stands. A farmer’s situation of engaging in productive labor does not involve prospering at the expense of others. A gambler’s situation does involve prospering at the expense (hurt) to others.

Gambling is not the same as an insurance company using the premiums of the insured as an investment, receiving returns with profit — in turn giving the insured protection and security.

In like manner investing in stocks and bonds in the stock market is a legitimate practice with reasonable hope of productive results in goods and services.

Gambling is different. Gambling exists being based on the sole hope of obtaining something for nothing, with no possibility of producing anything good. In a circumstance where so few win and so many lose just cannot be sensible.

Someone else objets by saying, “But gambling is not in the Bible!” That’s true! But white slavery, rape, suicide, bootlegging nor embezzlement are mentioned by name either! The point is, all of these are condemned, in principle, by what the Bible teaches.

Gambling is a spiritual catastrophe — a wheel of misfortune — because:

1. It encourages the wrong attitude. It destroys the incentive to work and to be a productive member of society. George Barnard Shaw stated, “. . . a citizen who is neither producing goods not performing services is in effect a beggar or a thief . . . Gambling, or the attempt to get money without earning it, is a vice which is economically (that is, fundamentally) ruinous.”

The Bible says we are to work:

“For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread” (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12).

Any attitude that promotes “get-rich-quick” -ism is wrong.

2. Gambling is a form of covetousness. Colossians 3:5 says that covetousness is idolatry. The term “easy money” is nothing but an euphemism for greed. And greed is nothing but a form of idolatry.

3. Gambling violates the second greatest commandment: “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39). You cannot honor that commandment and take your neighbor’s possessions at the turn of a card or the roll of the dice.

4. Gambling violates the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12. What if he agrees to it? But two men may agree to a dueling contest, yet would that make it right? An agreement doesn’t alter the fact that you are doing to him something you wouldn’t want him to do to you. Just an agreement to gamble doesn’t change the fact that it violates the Golden Rule.

5. Gambling is a sin against the family. The bad habit of gambling robs the family of the finances necessary to its support.

1 Timothy 5:8 says:

“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”

This is not to say that the morality of gambling is a matter of “affording it,” but as the Reader’s Digest article points out:

“Gambling has significant social and economic impact. It results in ruined lives, families and businesses; in bankruptcies and bad loans; in suicides, embezzlements and other crimes committed to feed or cover up gambling habits — and increases in costs to taxpayers for investigating, prosecuting and punishing those crimes.”

Conclusion

Gambling is everywhere. Those who advocate it promise that it is the answer to many problems. But, in reality, social woes result, financial difficulties emerge and the cost in spiritual and monetary terms is tremendous. Gambling — we don’t need it! Financially and, more importantly, spiritually, gambling robs us of what we cannot afford to lose.

Thank you for allowing us to make another radio visit with you.