A Bag with Holes

New York State voters in November approved a constitutional amendment legalizing bingo when sponsored by churches, charities and other non-profit organizations. This is sufficient commentary on the entrenched position gambling has come to occupy in mid-century America. Yet the Church of Christ has yet to raise its voice unitedly and effectively against this critical threat.

From whatever viewpoint we assess it, the practice of gambling condemns itself as a revelation of man’s folly and wickedness. A remark of the prophet Haggai is pertinent, spoken in another context but with all the pungent sarcasm of God’s messenger: “He who earns wages earns wages to put them into a bag with holes.” Once it is realized that gambling is indeed “a bag with holes,” the individual Christian can formulate his personal course of action intelligently and in obedience to the command of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. And Christians together can make the voice of the Church heard.

Gambling has been defined as “participation in any game of chance in which a prize is offered to the winner at the loser’s loss.” Thus, three factors are essential to gambling: a prize, a decisive element of chance, and a consideration, or a price. Gambling is, therefore, one of the means by which human beings consciously seek to satisfy certain desires to which their corrupted nature is bound to a greater or lesser degree. What then are those desires?

The strongest and most destructive is coveteousness, the passion for a better temporal state. The gambler, professional and amateur alike, is gripped by an oppressive discontent with Providence and the lot thereby assigned to him. He will take almost any risk for monetary gain. His philosophy of happiness is crudely materialistic and is spelled out in dollar signs. Conversely, from his vantage point misery and financial mediocrity are synonymous. The Bible singes covetousness with an unmistakable curse. It is singled out for special prohibition in the tenth commandment of the Decalogue. St. Paul castigates the love of money as the polluted fountain which spouts forth streams of iniquity. Elsewhere covetousness is equated with idolatry, which makes it a violation of the first of Sinai’s awesome laws, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Gambling is rooted in indolence. The gambler does not propose to climb the ladder of material success rung by rung through hard but honest toil; he hopes to leap to the heights in one jump. He wants something for nothing. There are only two honorable ways to the acquisition of things: by labor, which includes legitimate investment, and by gift, which includes inheritance. Apart from the latter, no one has title to personal gain except in exchange for time, effort, or money. This is the decree of Providence, the economic law of the universe, but the gambler boldly defies it.

Gambling stems from hatred of monotony, the desire for excitement. In itself this is not necessarily evil, for man was created to enjoy adventures. This natural bent explains the hero worship which is no respecter of either age or intelligence. But here the moral question is one of fulfillment. To deliberately make oneself a pawn of Lady Luck is to contradict the mind and will of God. To crave excitement to the point of taking uncontrollable risks recklessly is to reveal an inner spiritual void. It is to admit that one has no stabilizing purpose in life, no reliable creed, and no workable scale of values.

What Gambling Does

As for the effect of gambling upon the individual, it invariably shrivels the character and strips a man of any shred of respectability. Since gambling is born of indolence, it is not surprising that surrender to it confirms the gambler in idleness. Increasingly he despises all honest employment; and if he must work, he works at less than maximum efficiency, squandering both time and interest on his gambling. His vicious habit saps his integrity, and he tries to cheat in order to make his wins more probable. He further forfeits his sense of human values and becomes immunized to the needs and suffering of others. His gain is another’s loss, yet the fact never sends so much as a ripple of sympathy across the chords of his heart.

When President McKinley lay on his death bed, bets of $1,000 were made as to whether or not he would still be alive at a given hour. There is no more ghastly scene in history than that of the Roman soldiers carelessly tossing dice at the foot of the Cross for the possession of Christ’s homespun robe. These Romans never heard the seven words of redeeming love which fell from his lips. They were bewitched by a pair of dice.

The gambler’s covetousness entices him to take risks he cannot afford. He is convinced that with the next turn of the wheel he will win. But the games more often than not are fraudulently fixed—even capricious chance cannot smile on whom it will—and the man loses again. Still he plays on, for as the saying goes, “a quitter never wins,” and members of the trade mark him for a “sucker.”

The gambling habit ends in outrageous debts. These in turn drag a once upright citizen down into the gutters of crime and violence. Some years ago a Postmaster General stated that there were more dismissals from his department for dishonesty traceable to gambling than for drunkenness. In 1947, $400 million were embezzled; and from 30 to 75 per cent of this amount was seized by the holders of gambling debts. The game of chance is the first toll gate on the road to crime. Nor is it unusual for the gambler to end among alcoholics and suicides. Within a twelve-year period in Great Britain there were 156 successful or attempted suicides, 719 cases of theft and embezzlement, and 442 bankruptcies, all the products of gambling.

Not everyone who gambles reaps such a sordid fate, just as the moderate drinker does not inevitably become a hardened alcoholic. But these are the potential ends which face every gambler. Infinitely worse, the vice always sears and deadens the soul. The testimony of Jerry McAuley, who after his reclamation from the depths of sin by the sovereign grace of God, supervised New York City’s famous Bowery Mission, is pertinent. McAuley said that he saw scores of drunkards saved, debauchees cleansed, and common thieves redeemed, but he could count on his fingers the gamblers who responded to the invitation of Christ in the Bowery mission.

Social Effects Of Gambling

Although its greatest temptations are introduced through society, gambling is, oddly enough, undeniably anti-social. This, of course, follows naturally upon its corruption of individuals, for society is but the sum of individual human beings. What affects the individual must make its impact for good or ill upon society. Because Jesus Christ intensifies the social obligations of his followers, we must be concerned with the effects of gambling on this level also.

The first and primary institution that gambling attacks is the home. When a man takes to gambling, his home is eased out of the vital center of his life and is rivalled by this deadly outside interest. Often in the wake of extravagant gambling expenses come the collapse of the home, the decay of a marriage, and the tearing of family ties. If the home and marriage survive at all, the gambler’s wife and children are often forced to exist in material discomfort and economic insecurity. This is true not only of the professional gambler but of the amateur as well. Indeed, many a gambler leaves his family at his death under a cloud of disgrace born of debts they did not incur and cannot hope to pay.

Beyond the deprivation of the gambler’s family, there is an insidious connection between the gambler’s table and syndicated crime. The vast majority of percentage men are nothing but cheap swindlers who defraud the public. Gambling most abounds in districts already infamous for lawlessness, gang warfare, and prostitution. Senate investigations have shown that gambling has been adopted as the basic source of income by the organized criminals of this country who were driven out of the bootlegging racket with the repeal of prohibition.

The history of gambling in our nation is replete with frightening records of powerful alliances between gamblers and disreputable politicians. Without casting suspicion on the rank and file of honest office holders, let us face the lurid fact that not a few politicians occupy posts purchased for them by gambling profits and not a few others have sold their honor at the gambler’s bid for protection and exemption from legal prosecution. It has been conservatively estimated by reliable authorities that the racketeers spend more than $4 billion annually in the seduction of political officials and nominees.

All of us know what gambling occasionally does to wholesome athletics, both amateur and professional. In general, attempts to undermine the sportsmanship of rival teams in commercialized sports are unsuccessful. But the pressure is there, and now and then we read of a contest that has purposely been “thrown” because one or more players could not resist the glitter of gold.

Economic Effects Of Gambling

If gambling wrecks the individual and demoralizes society, it also disrupts and impairs the economy.

It is responsible for a perilous distribution of capital. The winners in all public games collect only a small percentage of the loser’s loss, the larger portion being seized by the crooked operators. Thus exorbitant sums of money which otherwise might be channeled into the promotion of the public welfare are not only taken out of circulation but are diverted into the soiled hands and bulging pockets of an irresponsible clique. This is no minor consideration; as early as 1832 the money spent by Americans on lottery tickets alone amounted to $66 million, five times the total budget of the Federal government for the same year. Recently it was estimated that the proceeds from organized gambling are in excess of $20 billion annually.

Those who loiter around the gambling dens constitute a severe loss of manpower in our economy. And the personnel occupied with the operation of the gambling machine are beyond count. To this manpower loss we must add the diminished productivity of the amateur gamblers who approach their daily tasks unenthusiastically and with a double mind. This much is certain: A nation of gamblers will not long be able to hold a place of influence in the world today, nor will it be able to cope with the menace of a spreading totalitarian philosophy of the magnitude of Soviet Communism.

Because gambling breeds lawlessness, it causes the crime bill to soar. The demand for larger police forces can be met only by a sizable increase in taxation. It is an arresting fact that the city of Reno, Nevada, where gambling is legalized, with a population of only 35,000, maintains a police force of 80. Relief agencies likewise complain that legalized gambling adds to their burden. On the one hand, it slashes their receipts by drying up both the financial resources and the charitable inclinations of the participants. On the other hand, by impoverishing a noticeable percentage of the gambling public it commits more people to their care.

A bag with holes! Who can find a better description of gambling?

Gambling Within The Church

The most vital problem, however, concerns gambling within the Christian Church. Those who sanction the practice usually commend it on the ground that it is an easy and lucrative method of raising funds for the Church and its inadequately supported projects. The financial condition of the Church in general is indeed a cause for grave concern. But it is an affront to the Church to insinuate that apart from the aid of gambling it either cannot or will not uphold the program assigned it by the Lord.

Is gambling, then, the solution to the financial problems of the Church? Indeed not. The fact is that the larger part of the proceeds from church gambling go to cover expenses, salaries, taxes, and commissions. On the average, only 14 cents on the dollar is profit. Church-sponsored gambling is, in fact, a severe deterrent to the spirit of voluntary giving and of true stewardship among church members. In some instances the drop in such income after the introduction of gambling has been, by official records, close to 50 percent. Once people, even Christians, are encouraged to anticipate something in return for their contributions, their willingness to give without thought of gain is stifled. Because profits from gambling do not offset loss in gifts the latter end is worse than the former.

But the worst fallacy in this theory is moral. The Church exists to promote universal acceptance of and compliance with the highest moral principles of society. More fundamental still, it exists to inculcate within the hearts of all men the ethical and spiritual ideals of its Founder and Head, Jesus Christ. Its basic doctrine is that by his atoning blood Christ cleanses the sinful nature of man and by his Holy Spirit invests man with the nature and dynamic of godliness. Every appeal of the Church to the Christian conscience must therefore conform entirely to the new and divine nature which is in harmony with the mind of God. And the only method of money raising consistent with the mind of God and human nature renewed in his image is the voluntary gift of gratitude, the spontaneous outflow of the redeemed heart to its Saviour, and the fulfillment of the Master’s principles of stewardship. Gambling, within or without the Church is a vice of sinful flesh.

In addition, when the Church approves any form of gambling, it gives to all gamblers alike an aura of respectability and an entering wedge into the community. It curtails effective enforcement of gambling laws already in existence. It trains its members, especially its youth, in the habit of gambling and feeds them to the racketeers, for most people can perceive no valid distinction between playing a game of chance in the Church or somewhere else.

God stir our consciences to act in accordance with his will and the facts of the case.

Richard Allen Bodey is minister of Third Presbyterian Church of North Tonawanda, New York. He holds the A.B. degree from Lafayette College and B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Books are his special interest; his 2200 volumes include autographed works by giants of the past, among them Spurgeon’s copy of J. A. Alexander’s Commentary on Acts.

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