Suppose you are walking on the square downtown one fine evening, when a stranger in dirty, ragged clothes walks up to you and says, “Hey, buddy – if you’ll give me a $20 bill, I might give you back $40.” Assuming you don’t call the police or brush past him and simply continue walking, you might ask: “But what if you don’t give me back $40 – what about my $20 bill?” The man replies, “Oh, I’ll keep that!”
Would you give the stranger your money, knowing you will probably never see it again? No? Well, what if the scruffy stranger says, “Wait, I’ll give you a better deal: if you’ll give me a $20, I might give you back $100 – but I probably won’t.” Now would you hand over your money? You wouldn’t?
Ah, but what if he then says, “Ok, ok, here’s my final offer: if you’ll give me $20, I might give you back $100 million, but I almost certainly won’t.” NOW you’ll reach for your wallet, right? I know, I know, you’re thinking “Anyone would be an idiot to throw their money away like that.” Oh, but dress the stranger in nicer clothing, and put him in a more sophisticated setting, and people will flock to give him not just $20 but $100’s and even thousands! How? Easy – just call the stranger GAMBLING!
Whether they’re buying a lottery ticket or playing the slots at the riverboat casino or even playing poker on an on-line website, the principle is the same: when people gamble they’re taking a risk with their money in the hopes of getting their hands on someone else’s money! Gambling is an activity where you might walk away with some extra money – and then again, you might not. The element of chance is what makes gambling so captivating, so fatally fascinating to many people.
Psychologists have understood the addictive power of that attraction for generations: it is called intermittent variable reward. All the way back in 1937 a researcher named B.F. Skinner, one of the pioneers of behavioral psychology, asked a simple question: “How do you motivate a rat?” (Now, haven’t we all asked ourselves that same question?)
To find out, Skinner built a miniature machine that dispensed rat biscuits when a marble was inserted in a slot. In order to get the marble, the rat had to pull a chain with its teeth. The rat would pull the chain, the marble would fall, the rat would drop the marble in the slot, the machine would dispense a tiny little biscuit, and bingo, you have a happy rat.
Then Skinner began to tinker with the predictability of the results. He learned that if the machine NEVER gave a reward, the rat soon (understandably) lost interest. And if the machine ALWAYS dispensed a biscuit, the rat was only slightly motivated.
But Skinner discovered that if you really want to motivate a rat, make the payout RANDOM. That is, when the rat dropped a marble into the slot, sometimes it got a biscuit, and sometimes it didn’t. Once he introduced the element of CHANCE, the rats’ level of motivation shot up dramatically and those little fellows would work themselves into a frenzy, pulling the chain and dropping the marble to see what would happen.
And when I read that research, can you guess what image flashed into my mind? That’s right: I could clearly picture rows and rows of rats, sitting in front of tiny little slot machines, dropping their miniature marbles into the slot and pulling the handle! Can’t you imagine that tiny rodent casino in your mind?
I’m being facetious, but in real life that “maybe I’ll win, maybe I won’t” element is so intoxicating for some people that it becomes addictive, destructive, even life-destroying. I have personally known individuals who lost their life savings, their marriage, their job, everything they once possessed because they got wrapped up in gambling.
Americans wager hundreds of billions a year: they bet on everything from bingo to football to horseracing to blackjack. Americans now spend more on gambling than on groceries! All that money, in spite of the fact that it would be difficult to imagine a practice more financially foolish: by definition the odds are always against you! Most people lose most of the time! Gamblers even joke about it:
There’s the story of the gambler on his way into the racetrack who fervently prays, “Lord, please help me break even today, because I really need the money.”
Or they tell of the honest gambler who traveled to the casino but found it closed for repairs, so he just shoved his money under the door and went home!
Doyce Jones, a member of my congregation and a good friend, told me of being in a barber shop downtown, many years ago, when a young man walked in bragging of $40 he had won buying lottery tickets. “And how much did you spend on those tickets?” asked one of the men in the barber shop. “I bought $50 worth, but if I’d known I was going be so lucky, I would have bought $100 worth!”
As Christians we are commanded to practice good stewardship, but it is difficult to imagine a more foolish way to use your money than gambling. Let’s face it – anyone who would put his money into a system that, over time, is guaranteed not to give it all back, and often doesn’t give any of it back, is not exactly exercising sound financial planning!
Years ago I had to stop over in Las Vegas on a cross-country trip. I walked through the casinos and marveled at the expensive marble, cut-glass chandeliers, plush carpets. I saw the fountains at Bellagio and the erupting volcano. Now, I’m just a country boy from Tennessee, but I’m smart enough to know one thing – somebody has to pay for all those high-dollar attractions. You know those commercials on television, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”? What they really mean is, the tourists come and the tourists go, but their money stays behind!
And no – they didn’t get a nickel of my money! My father educated me about gambling long ago. My dad grew up on a farm back during the Depression. Even though he had worked hard, he was lucky to earn a quarter a day. One fall, back in the 1930’s, he visited the county fair with a whole dollar in his pocket. As he was walking down the midway one of the barkers enticed him into a booth where there was a “can’t miss” opportunity to win a prize in a game of chance. In short order my dad’s dollar was gone, and his fair fun was over. My father told me, “I figured my money was too hard to come by – so that was the last dollar I ever spent on gambling.”
Until the late 1980s, commercial casinos were legal in only two states: Nevada and New Jersey. As of June 2022, they were legal in over 30 states, and there are about 1,500 commercial and tribal casinos in the United States. Many of them aggressively market to seniors, and even provide free bus transportation so that low-income retirees can make a day trip to gamble.
In addition, there are thousands of gambling websites on the Internet, so Americans now can enjoy the convenience of going broke in the anonymity of their own home. And the latest innovation is the introduction of sports betting apps, so that individuals can bet on any sports game in real time. Many experts are warning that having one of these apps on your smart phone is like having a casino in your pocket, and that they will prove to be the “crack cocaine” of gambling.
Perhaps the most familiar form of gambling to retired Americans is the lottery. Since 1963, when New Hampshire began the first state-sponsored lottery in America in modern times, 44 states and the District of Columbia have caught the fever – state governments are aggressively promoting the practice of gambling, with such slogans as “You have to be in it to win it” and “Someone’s going to win”!
Yes, but it won’t be you. Every lottery does (eventually) produce one, or maybe a couple, of winners, but for every grinning winner holding an oversized check for the cameras, there are hundreds of millions of losing tickets. Think I’m exaggerating? Consider this: in order to win the Powerball jackpot, you must correctly guess five white ball numbers randomly chosen from a drum of 69 numbers, and then correctly guess one red ball out of a drum of 26 numbers. Your chances of hitting all six numbers are 1 in 292,201,338. Let that sink in: one winner for every 292,201,337 losers!
“But Dan, the jackpots are getting so huge! The payoffs have never been higher!” That is correct, and it only proves my point. What many people don’t comprehend is the reason the jackpots are bigger is because the odds, which were already ridiculously low, are now even worse. Back in 2015, Powerball added more numbers to the drawing, making it easier to win smaller prizes, but also more difficult to win the jackpot. Mega Millions followed suit in 2017. The odds of winning the jackpot jumped from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million.
As a result, the lotteries now routinely roll over week after week with no winner, and consequently the jackpots grow bigger and bigger. The eyepopping jackpots whip people into a frenzy of greed, leading them to purchase even more tickets, which is precisely the wrong conclusion. Note this vicious cycle: the larger the number of losers, the larger the jackpot, and the larger the jackpot, the larger the number of losers. Lotteries have famously been called a “tax on the willing” – it would be more accurate to say they are a tax on the mathematically illiterate.
I’m no math genius myself, but I have learned enough about statistics to realize that, short of burning your dollars to keep warm in the winter, there is not a more foolish way to waste your money. Anyone who buys a lottery ticket is chasing a fool’s fantasy, and as a very wise man counseled centuries ago: “Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies have no sense” (Proverbs 12:11).
So, is gambling a good deal? Is it a wise use of my money? Is it an activity that will glorify God? Is gambling an appropriate and wholesome activity for a Christian? My friends, I wouldn’t bet on it!
Dan Williams