The Evils of Gambling

The “casting of lots” in Matthew 27 describes soldiers gambling for pieces of Jesus' clothing, an evil scene that no Christian should want to take part in. The Bible doesn’t call gambling a sin, but it does contain many verses to guide us about wanting easy money.

For one person to win $100 at a slot machine, another person had to lose $100. For one person to win $100 million in the lottery, a whole lot of other people had to lose $100 million, one dollar ticket at a time.

The argument is often made that gambling, the lottery in particular, has a positive impact on society. Casinos create jobs that benefit the local community. The lottery produces funds that benefit the schools and children.

But at what cost? Remember, with gambling, no one can win unless someone else loses. That indisputable fact alone wipes out the argument that gambling benefits society. It’s often said that the lottery is a way to get poor people to pay for middle income kids’ college.

Gambling has long been labeled an addiction by mental health professionals, and the cost of that addiction is hidden from view. Slot machines light up and bells go off when there’s a winner, but never when someone loses. A person holds a giant check on TV for winning the lottery, but we don’t see the father who spent half his paycheck on lottery tickets.

Researchers have identified a host of ways that gambling harms the individual and society as a whole, including crime, loss of work productivity, bankruptcy, broken families and even suicide.

Economists would tell you that there’s yet another downside to gambling, what they call “opportunity cost.” That means we’ll never see the positive gain that spending hard-earned dollars elsewhere would have achieved, such as increased capital and job creation.

We’ve described gambling as a zero sum game, but that’s just for the individuals engaged in it. For society as a whole, one could easily argue that gambling represents a net loss.