BY JONATHAN GALLAGHER
Nothing really wrong in a lottery ticket, is there?”
“Just a harmless flutter at the horse races. Not like it’s serious gambling . . . ”
“People spend more going to Disney World. Gambling’s only another kind of entertainment.”
So the rationalizations run. Likening gambling to a family day out or a sporting event or a board game. But is it such a harmless pastime—nothing to worry about?
The statistics say otherwise. With more than 15 million “problem and pathological gamblers” and a total of $600 billion spent on gambling in the U.S. alone last year, the impact of gambling is huge. The report issued in June 1999 by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission1 revealed an explosion in the gambling obsession, and called for a halt in new gambling approvals while the damage is assessed.
Gambling is now all around us. In all but two U.S. states it’s legal. Thirty-seven states now sponsor lotteries, and in 1997 those states spent $400 million on lottery advertising alone.
The advertising is working. More than two thirds of all Americans gambled in 1998. As the study commission admits, in just 20 years the U.S. has gone from a country in which only a handful of states permitted gambling to the world’s leader in betting on games of chance.
But so what? ask the skeptics. Gambling is good for business—in fact, it is a major business. Returns for Native American reservation casinos have grown from $212 million in 1988 to $6.7 billion in 1997. Huge business.
How should Christians respond? Is it appropriate to play the social role of killjoy, simply telling people that they should not “have fun” gambling? Or are there fundamental moral and social issues that need to be understood?
Gambling Is Anti-Christian
At its heart gambling is basically selfish. The primary preoccupation is with me and my own self-centered desires for material gain. Added to that is the reality that such self-seeking must also be at the expense of many others who are required to lose. Growing rich by acquiring money from many people, based on a random game of chance, could never be in harmony with the will of Jesus, who told us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:39).
Some gambling operations, including those run by U.S. state governments, cloak this hard fact by designating a percentage of gambling income to “good causes,” as though funding public welfare or education somehow makes the basic selfish drive to gamble more acceptable. Would “good cause” donations from alcohol or tobacco manufacturers make the use of their product more acceptable? There are certainly advertising executives who hope so. But does that make it morally right to get drunk just because part of what you’ve spent on alcohol is funding the local school?
Despite attempts by state and national governments to disguise the issue by using funds for arts programs and education and social welfare projects, the truth is that gambling is hard-core selfishness of the worst kind: the feverish craving for money for me at the expense of everybody else.
The method by which this is accomplished also points to gambling’s anti-Christian principles. Taking money from the many and giving it to the few is a reverse of the Robin Hood thesis: It is “legitimated theft” that takes from the poor and makes a very few people rich—a selfish principle completely at odds with Jesus’ call for mutual love and support. Early Christians shared their material possessions together (see Acts 2; 3) rather than running down to the local casino or lottery ticket seller.
And what of ideas of stewardship and responsibility? Gambling away savings is hardly consistent with Christian ideals of caring for the family and community through giving. Gambling replaces the law of love with the base instinct of fallen human nature and makes a god of the self-centered thrill of possible personal gain.
Christians are called to be stewards (1 Cor. 4:2) of their time and talents. In Jesus’ parable of the talents, not even the foolish steward thought about gambling with what his lord had given him. Scripture teaches that our time and resources are God’s, and are to be used wisely for the best of causes, not laid out as an offering to mammon on the gambling tables of this world.
“Satan has invented many ways in which to squander the means which God has given. Card playing, betting, gambling, horse racing, and theatrical performances are all of his own inventing, and he has led men to carry forward these amusements as zealously as though they were winning for themselves the precious boon of eternal life. Men lay out immense sums in following these forbidden pleasures; and the result is [that] their God-given power, which has been purchased by the blood of the Son of God, is degraded and corrupted. The physical, moral, and mental powers which are given to men of God, and which belong to Christ, are zealously used in serving Satan, and in turning men from righteousness and holiness.”2
Instead of promoting careful use of funds for present and future responsibilities, gambling urges, “Bet it all on the turn of a card, the throw of the dice.” This trust in a random chance contradicts the Christian’s trust in God as the giver of all good and perfect gifts, and focuses on the “Big Win” as the great cure-all.
Gambling Is Anti-Society
The cost of gambling is by no means limited to lost bets. Society annually pays a huge bill from the associated costs of gambling, including welfare payments as families fall apart, costs of treatment, work absences, fraud, theft, and so on. In trying to establish a balance sheet on the impact of gambling in the community, the much-hyped “job creation” and “cash inflow” must be counterbalanced by the massive cost to society of the problems caused by gambling.
But more than the monetary cost is the human cost to society in broken families and broken individuals, the impact of an obsession with a totally unproductive activity, the hidden personal damage of futile and pointless lives.
Both legal and illegal gambling have negative impacts on society: Making gambling legal does nothing to change these consequences. In the words of George Washington: “Gambling is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.”
Down through history such testimonies have been proved consistently true. According to Thom White Wolf Fassett of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society: “Wherever gambling has gone, it has brought serious social implications—addiction, crime, bankrupted businesses, and broken families.” The United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline says that “gambling is a menace to society, deadly to the best interests of moral, social, economic, and spiritual life, and destructive of good government.”3
In an analysis of the societal costs of gambling, one study dramatically illustrated the danger by stating that increased gambling would be like another Hurricane Andrew every year—forever. (Andrew cost the U.S. $32 billion, and is the most expensive natural disaster it has ever experienced.)4 Other costs from pathological gamblers include additional police effort, court and prison costs, social services costs, and lost work productivity. An increased suicide rate, more frequent car accidents, and an increased incidence of child abuse are also associated with gambling behaviors.5
Gambling Is Immoral
The way in which ostensibly “casual” gambling often triggers an obsession and an addiction—similar to other addictions—clearly shows it is incompatible with a Christian lifestyle. Compulsive gamblers report an “adrenaline rush” from gambling, and how this “keeps them hooked.” While the church of Jesus must always extend its help to those suffering from gambling or other addictions and avoid blaming the victim, it must likewise disassociate itself from gambling’s damaging behaviors in the most emphatic ways. Christians recognize that they have been “bought with a price” and that they are responsible before God for their resources and lifestyle (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
Gambling brings its adherents squarely up against the prohibitions of God’s moral law, for it selfishly seeks to exploit the combined wealth of others through chance. “All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of others, involves a breach of the tenth commandment,” wrote Richard Whately, nineteenth-century archbishop of Dublin. “You shall not covet” means not wanting to have what belongs to others—which is exactly what gamblers do want! The fact that people participate “willingly” doesn’t alter the fundamental moral problem. And Ephesians 5:5 reminds us that no covetous person has an inheritance in the kingdom of God.
Gambling emphasizes the thrill of the moment, not the wise use of funds for the future and the benefit of others. Its moral failure is seen in the fact that the pleasure derived from it is based on the pain of others’ losses. No gambler can win big without fellow gamblers losing in at least some amount. The New Testament call to “be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another. . . . Repay no one evil for evil” (Rom. 12:10-17, NKJV) can’t be reconciled with the “me-first” hedonism of the blackjack table or the slot machine.
Where does the impulse for gambling come from? Human greed, nurtured by the powers of evil: “The whole world is lying in wickedness. We see on every side crime, murder, embezzlement, pleasure seeking, gambling, horse racing, and every manner of evil. Who is the leader in all this engrossing of the minds of men in evil? It is Satan, who soon expects to gather in the harvest of the whole earth.”6
Gambling Is Bad for the Economy
“Gambling is not the only kind of business that can remove dollars from a local economy,” said U.S. senator Paul Simon, “but very few remove proportionately as much money for so marginal an increase in public revenue. Given the widespread evidence that gambling hurts a community, what rationale is there for government to act as a conduit for the profits of private promoters? The answer is none. But naive public officials, like addicted railbirds, remain convinced that someday they’ll hit the jackpot. It’s a delusion as old as gambling itself.”7
Gambling itself produces nothing of value: It simply takes from the many who lose and gives to a few winners. Of course, the greatest winner is the one operating the gambling scheme. The claim that gambling aids and benefits local communities has been repeatedly disproved. When the costs of the increased crime, policing, and societal disruption associated with gambling are added in, no community “wins.” The National Council on Problem Gambling reports compulsive gamblers annually cost American businesses a staggering $40 billion in lost wages and insurance claims.8
Another sad fact is that it’s usually those who can’t afford it who spend proportionately the most—especially on lotteries. In economic terms, it simply doesn’t make sense for a government to sponsor lotteries, since their negative economic impact more than offsets the income they provide the government coffers. Neither is a lottery a fair “tax,” since all pay the same for a lottery ticket, regardless of personal wealth. A “regressive tax,” gambling almost invariably removes more from local economies than it returns.
Despite the claims, relatively little income from gambling actually benefits the neighborhood school. Less than 4 percent of state and local education budgets were funded by lottery contributions in 11 states that do tag lottery funds for education, an Education Research Service study showed.
A Maryland study found that those with incomes below $5,000 spent 21 times as much on the state lottery as those whose incomes were above $25,000. In a Delaware study, researchers found a lottery outlet for every 1,981 people in the poorest neighborhoods, but no outlets in upper-income districts with 17,600 people. Such targeting cannot be coincidental: At worst, it is exploitative and cynical.9
Gambling Promotes Crime
Direct crime (such as robbery and crimes of violence), associated criminal activities (such as drugs and prostitution), and indirect crimes (such as fraud and embezzlement) abound in gambling environments. It is one of the oldest truisms of our civilization: Where there is gambling, there is crime—to support the need to bet, to exploit the winners, to make a profit off the casino or riverboat or betting shop. From the larceny, cheating, and embezzlement practiced by many gamblers themselves to the organized crime, money laundering, and kickbacks now tied to gambling institutions, criminal activity follows wherever gambling flourishes.
At least 40 percent of all white-collar crime is committed by or on behalf of problem gamblers, according to the American Insurance Institute. Two out of every three compulsive gamblers report that they would resort to crime to feed their obsession. One third of all prison inmates are identified as compulsive gamblers; one half are there for gambling-associated crimes.10
The massive impact on society from the costs caused by problem gamblers, crime committed to pay for their gambling habit, increased policing and legal costs, associated crime including drugs and prostitution—all pale into insignificance with the toll in damaged human lives, broken families, and gambling suicides.
For gambling is frequently the point of departure for other evils. Once on a losing streak, gamblers will cheat, lie, commit fraud, deceive, accuse others—all in an attempt to cover up their problems and to gain more money for their addiction. In one Gambling Anonymous study almost one half of those responding had committed insurance fraud, with an average amount defrauded of $65,000. What begins as an “innocent lottery game” all too frequently ends up in a criminal record and a shattered life.
Between 1978, when Atlantic City’s first casino opened, and 1981 the city’s crime rate tripled. It went from a ranking of fiftieth in the nation in per capita crime to first. Hardly an enviable record for the city that claims gambling was its salvation. And hardly a good sign for civic leaders who claim to be interested in building strong, secure communities.
“As in the days before the flood, violence is filling the land,” Ellen White wrote nearly a century ago. “Gambling and robbery are coming to be common evils. The use of intoxicating liquors is on the increase. Many who have followed their own unsanctified will seek to end their unprofitable lives by suicide. Iniquity and crime of every order are found in the high places of the earth, and those who assent to these wrongs are seeking to shield the guilty ones from punishment. Not one hundredth part of the corruptions that exist is being made plain to the world. Little of the cruelty that is carried on is known. The wickedness of men has almost reached its limit.”11
Gambling Is Unproductive and Wasteful
“Money for nothing” is the enticing gambling slogan. This siren song rejects the concept of “honest labor,” of being gainfully employed, and replaces it with the “entertainment” of rolling the dice or pulling the slot-machine lever or scratching off the “lucky numbers” of a lottery card.
God’s Word identifies physical work as the primary means of gaining material benefit, not the playing of a game of chance, dreaming to gain at the expense of others (1 Thess. 4:11; Gen. 3:19). Gambling replaces true work with foolish dreams in an unproductive environment that discourages productivity and encourages idleness.
The apostle Paul’s counsel to thieves applies to gamblers, too: “He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need” (Eph. 4:28, NIV). To the lazy free loaders in Thessalonica, Paul also had tough words: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10, NIV).
The wise use of money is a spiritual principle, for money can be used to do much good. That’s why “money abuse” (such as gambling) is so strongly condemned in Scripture. God pleads with us, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” (Isa. 55:2, NIV).
The basis of the gambling dream is to win big financially. Such an illusory dream replaces true hope with this false hope in the statistically improbable chance of great personal gain. Christians are told not to put their hope in wealth (1 Tim. 6:17), but in the promised future of God, which is “sure” and “certain” (Heb. 11:1, NIV). The “great gain” that the Bible points to is “godliness with contentment” (1 Tim. 6:6), not the unproductive and wasteful glitter of gambling’s fool’s gold.
“By gambling, we lose both our time and treasure, two things most precious to the life of man,” said seventeenth-century Englishman Owen Felltham. How foolish to waste both in gambling, so that we lose not just our time and our money, but our very lives!
Ellen White saw the issue clearly: “The money devoted to horse racing, theater going, gambling and lotteries; the money spent in the public houses for beer and strong drink—let it be expended in making the land productive, and we shall see a different state of things.”12
Gambling Is Personally Destructive
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (verse 10, NIV).
On average, about one of 10 gamblers will become compulsive. Along with many other millions, they will not be able to control their habit, and will sink into a vicious cycle of dependence that becomes increasingly costly in monetary terms as well as severely impacting the family. The chances are that they will not recover from their addiction, that they will cause their families to break up and lose their opportunity for a happy life. Some will choose to end their lives as the misery becomes too great.
As an addiction the process is similar to other addictions such as alcoholism and drug dependence. While some may claim to be able to gamble without significant problems, others will discover their addictive tendencies only when they are hopelessly trapped in the destructive behavior.
Richard Cumberland, an English bishop writing 300 years ago, was precise and direct. “I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in his hand. All that follows in his fatal career, from that time, is only sharpening the dagger before he strikes it to his heart.”
Centuries earlier the Roman poet Horace neatly summed up the pain of the gambler’s addiction in two lines: “Cursed is the wretch enslaved to such a vice, Who ventures life and soul upon the dice.”
Despite the occasional wins, gamblers ultimately lose, and lose big. Despite the few winners, millions of others lose—in purchasing power, available income, discretionary time, and moral accomplishment. Even when they win, gamblers keep on gambling, so they lose. It’s not merely the cash they lose, bad as that is. It is the loss of their relationships, their dignity, their character that ultimately is most tragic.
Jesus asked the still-penetrating question: “For what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?”
When you add it all up, the counsel of Charles Simeon, a nineteenth-century American clergyman, still rings true: “The best throw with the dice is to throw them away.”
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1 National Gambling Impact Study Commission, 800 N. Capitol Street, NW., Suite 450, Washington, D.C. 20002. The following financial statistics are taken from this report.
2 Ellen White, Counsels on Stewardship, pp. 134, 135.
3 Both quotes in a news report from the United Methodist News Service, “Methodists Called to Act on Gambling Study,” June 21, 1999.
4 E. L. Grinols and J. D. Omorov, Development or Dreamfield Delusions? Assessing Casino Gambling’s Costs and Benefits (Cham-paign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1995).
5 Ibid.
6 White, in Signs of the Times, Apr. 23, 1894.
7 Senator Paul Simon, 138 Congressional Record, S187, Jan. 22, 1992.
8 National Council on Problem Gambling Web site; www.ncpgambling.org.
9 Norman L. Geisler, Gambling—A Bad Bet (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1990), pp 24, 25.
10 Durand F. Jacobs and Jerry L. Pettis, “Problem Gamblers and White-Collar Crime” (paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Institute for the Study of Gambling, Reno, Nevada 89501).
11 White, in Review and Herald, Mar. 31, 1910.
12———, Fundamentals of Christian Education, p. 318.
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Jonathan Gallagher, Ph.D., is news director of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Silver Spring, Maryland.
