THE EVIL OF GAMBLING

Yes, I just called Gambling sin, in case you are wondering. This might sound like a baseless conclusion if you don’t read this presentation to the end. I must also apologize to the emotions that are about to be hurt by this presentation but surgery is one painful mode of treating. Gambling is not just a national problem but a global enemy. Until 2013 gambling was a first world country problem Australia being in the lead, then Singapore, Canada, the U.S, U.K, Finland, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Japan but since 2016 it has gained grounds in third world countries.

In Kampala-Uganda where I live, there is literally a betting house in every a kilometer. In Uganda, people are grouped into four categories: group one is for politics, group two is for entertainment (music, dance, and drama, then alcohol and all sorts of gluttony and sex), group three is hyper with religion and the final group is in gambling. If you asked what is trending, the hash tag would read either of the four. In this city that I live in, there is at least one gambling kiosk in every hundred meter radius. These can be in form of:

• Lotteries
• Racing track
• Casinos
• Slot Machines
• Roulette
• Sports Betting
• Poker
• Internet
• Dice
• Bingo
• Cards. e.t.c.

We are socially positioned and psychologically a target market for gambling. We are so conditioned and placed to consider gambling as an economic option. Our Media (audio, visual and print) are ardent and consistently telling us who won and how much they won but it does not report who lost and how much they lost. Our newspapers have special magazines by experts who train people on how to gamble and win. Our government, through its policy makers with poor policies and weak legislatures, has licensed these gambling companies using taxes as a justification for this evil.

Gambling is now a business that is legitimate and accepted socially. Because of this psychological conditioning, gambling has taken on a different form in churches. People, instead of working, these days flock churches for miracles and run after the so-called prophets and men of god for miraculous and easy ways to wealth and health. This is all gambling. We live in an extremely superstitious world, where magic is the creed. It important then that we talk about this issue of Gambling.

Let me start with the definitions: I don’t know what you take gambling to be, or how your government or society defined it. Perhaps they call it work, or some sort of investment or an economy booster. I just don’t know how it is defined. But the actual definition of Gambling is to risk money or something of value on the outcome of a game, a contest, or other event. All sober business runs upon one principle known as transaction. However, according to this definition, gambling is not a transaction but a manipulated transfer of what is valuable for that without value.

In a casino, no money plays, bets can only be made with casino chips. Kusyszyn once said: During gambling, money loses its economic value. When a sports betting house takes your money or any other valuable item, in exchange they give you a piece of paper. Gambling is treating chance events as controllable. Gambling, therefore, is organized fraud. The second definition is that Gambling is any setting or wagering for self or others, whether for money or not, no matter how slight or insignificant, where the outcome is uncertain or depends upon chance. There are three elements in this definition:

• It is an uncertain and arbitrary event. It is a business founded on luck.
• It is the wager (i.e. something of value) that is deliberately chanced on an assumed outcome.
• There is always a winner and a loser and the winner loses at the direct loss of the other gambler.

All gamblers can be categorized under two disorders. Whoever gambles, gambles because they suffer from a:

• Psychological disorder, that is to say their brain mechanism struggles with problem analysis and therefore the solution it can come up with is limited. Their definition of a problem is confused and cannot come up with a long-term solution but a gamble.
• Spiritual disorder, individuals who gamble are they that have a spiritual problem. Those who in their core being suffer from greed, covetousness and misguided desire.

Gambling, therefore, is both a Psychological and a Spiritual problem. And this is why it has become hard to deal with. Gambling is as problematic as adultery or the sex issue is in our communities. Gambling is a habit of both genders men and women, however, each gender involves itself in the business for different reasons:

• Women gamble due to emotional breakdown and some psychological conditionings.
• Men, however, gamble due to excitement, competition, and hopes of easy big wins.

The age bracket for gamblers ranges from 16yr-70yrs and the economic classification of these ranges from the richest to the poorest. Gambling is an evil that evolved from two factors: the primary one being sin and the second one being the sinfulness of man in inventing paper money. Just like our fraudulent economy trades our valuable resources for paper money that has no value, so do gambling companies take all that we have in exchange for nothing.

These companies use what I call the Gambling Coy. They exercise deductible generosity by giving you tips, small and big gifts to lure you to give more than you have got. They do it through raffles like buy one get one free. In telephone companies, they calculate the worth of a car and get millions of people to send in messages at a cost of 1000shs each.

By the time they give out the car, they have collected money that can buy more than 20 cars, but they give one and in most cases give it to their own. In the process they are doing what is known as player development, trying to motivate you so that you put in more than you should. And they make you think and feel entitled to more than you deserve.

Gambling develops and nurtures a false optimism in the mindset of the addict, and he keeps throwing his resources into the game until he has nothing left. In the world of gambling when you lose they tell you it is bad luck, but when you win that equals to good analysis and play skills.

It is not true that in gambling no one wins, no, in gambling there is always a standard winner and a permanent loser. The standard and constant winner is the company and its agents while the permanent loser is the individual who bets in his money. It is only people who cannot understand the “odds” that gamble. If you knew this truth, then you wouldn’t dare.

There is an English proverb that says: “IN A BET THERE IS A FOOL AND A THIEF”. Believe me, the fool is whoever bets his money however little it is and the thief is the gambling industry. You see, Gambling is built on one biased principle known as WHAT IF? Every gambler looks at the attractive and enticing odds, and in their minds they are like: what if I win all this? What if I win like the guy I know or the one I read in the papers did. Greed and covetousness kicks in and boom, they throw away all they have.

Now as a pastor and a theologian, I have to tell you that there is no single text that forbids gambling in the Bible as it is that there is no one that commands. And as a Christian apologist, I know truth suffers due to fallacious argument. Am not telling you to quit gambling in reference to a biblical law that says: thou shalt not gamble. I just want to tell you that the Bible is not a dictionary of morals but a revelation of the word of God. Just as there is no law, of thou shalt not commit suicide, but we all know it is bad to take a life starting with yours, so it is bad to take one’s resources including yours.

Gambling is not bad because we have to work for our money, after all not everything we get in life we work for. Some is a result of help, and others are gifts. If we prohibit gambling on the premises of work, then we will need to define what work is. So this is a weak argument against gambling.

Secondly, gambling is not wrong because of the risk factor. There is nothing risk-free in life while we are stationed in a sinful world. So this also is a weak argument. According to me, there are four reasons why every Christian or any other well-thinking person should not engage in gambling. Gambling is wrong and therefore evil because:

• There is a winner and a loser. Like I said earlier, in every bet, there is a fool and a thief. The fool is a permanent loser and the thief is a standard winner. God wants us to exercise win-win deals even in our business. That is why God ordains us to have fair profits in all that we do. Jesus said: “Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). Win-win thinking is an application of the Golden Rule. The apostle Paul also discussed this principle in Philippians 2:3: “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.” (Romans 12 also describes how to live at peace with others; see verses 10 and 14-21.). In gambling, this biblical principle is violated.
• It is a slave master. Gambling is addictive and enslaving. Gamblers are never in control but it is the habit that controls them. “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15 NAS). Gambling is a slave master because, in the whole bargain, it is only the company that knows what it is doing but not the gambler.
• Wealth is gotten by transacting nothing for something. In gambling, the company gives the gambler nothing in exchange for their money. So the gambler gathers wealth out of nothing. And this fraud. The Biblical principle of wealth is opposed to wealth gotten by vanity. Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labor shall increase. (Proverbs 13:11 KJV). The Hebrew word translated as ‘Vanity’ is Hehbel which means vapor. Figuratively this word means something transitory or something unsatisfactory.
• It is LUCK not a BLESSING. Regardless of the indoctrination that what matters in gambling is analysis and skills, gambling is purely founded on luck. Now as Christians we are never lucky with God but blessed. Luck is a pagan, non-Christian concept that views good or bad fortune — and success — as a tangible thing unto itself. Seeking “luck” is closely connected with superstition, which in turn connected to magic. According to this world view, humans are at the mercy of unseen powerful and uncertain forces whose chances to help or hurt are equal. We are never lucky with God, we are blessed and God blesses tangible operative systems in place. He told us to work with the natural resources and he promised to bless the work of our hands. The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. (Deuteronomy 28:12).

God bless you. I invoke Truth, Wisdom and Faith

Pr. I.T.WHITE

THE GOSPEL HAWKER