{"id":38043,"date":"2020-07-24T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T12:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/its-time-to-get-rid-of-lottery\/"},"modified":"2020-07-24T12:40:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T12:40:00","slug":"its-time-to-get-rid-of-lottery","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/its-time-to-get-rid-of-lottery\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time to Get Rid of The Lottery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Writer Leah Muncy recalls one of her earliest memories is of her mother buying a lottery ticket at the supermarket. &ldquo;When I was young, my mother was always talking about the &lsquo;lotto.&rsquo; Around the kitchen table, she&rsquo;d tell us what she&rsquo;d do with the millions: buy a large farm with chickens, fly us to Mexico, solar-panel the roof.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>The odds of winning the multi-state Powerball jackpot are one-in-292-million. You have a greater chance of dying from a falling coconut, which is one in 250 million. Despite this, Americans spent $71.8 billion on lottery tickets in 2017. The bulk of this revenue was generated by the poorest Americans.<\/p>\n\n<p>According to a study conducted by Cornell University, the lottery is most aggressively advertised in impoverished communities, particularly minority and rural white neighborhoods. This exploitation leads to the &ldquo;desperation hypothesis&rdquo;: those in the direst of financial circumstances turn to the lottery as &ldquo;a hail-Mary strategy.&rdquo; It is a source of hope for those in despair. A 2019 survey found that 75% of lottery players believe that they will win.<\/p>\n\n<p>The study also found that people who made less than $30,000 a year were more likely to play the lottery for financial stability. One in three Americans with incomes below $25,000 believe that winning the lottery &ldquo;represents the most practical way for them to accumulate several hundred thousand dollars.&rdquo; This, in turn, only makes America&rsquo;s poorest even poorer.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Muncy continues, &ldquo;My mother estimates she&rsquo;s spent $3,000 on lottery tickets in her lifetime. &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t win if you don&rsquo;t play,&rsquo; she says. But I tell her, that you can&rsquo;t win if you do play.&rdquo; The lottery did not ever and will not ever provide her with a ranch, or solar panels, or vacations. This beacon of false hope can be seen at the top of every California lottery ticket, a sun shining above the chosen numbers. It is golden, radiant, looming. And it is blinding.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\"> <\/h2>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[410,411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[433],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3380,3683,3726,3762,3796,3991,4027,4036,4037,4100,4117,4391,4401,4435,4475,4488,4528,4661,4669,4843,4849,4915,5266],"tax_ctp_topics":[392,396],"class_list":["post-38043","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-addiction","tax_ctp_tags-contentment","tax_ctp_tags-culture","tax_ctp_tags-depravity","tax_ctp_tags-discontent","tax_ctp_tags-finances","tax_ctp_tags-fulfillment","tax_ctp_tags-gambling","tax_ctp_tags-gaming","tax_ctp_tags-greed","tax_ctp_tags-happiness","tax_ctp_tags-loss","tax_ctp_tags-love-of-money","tax_ctp_tags-materialism","tax_ctp_tags-misery","tax_ctp_tags-money","tax_ctp_tags-need","tax_ctp_tags-poor","tax_ctp_tags-poverty","tax_ctp_tags-riches","tax_ctp_tags-risk","tax_ctp_tags-self-destruction","tax_ctp_tags-wealth"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - 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