Gambling and the Common Good
— Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 —
Kentucky, the state where I live, is abuzz these days with discussion over expanded gambling.The governor here wants it, and conservative Christian groups don’t. This argument is hardly limited to here. I lived through it in my ancestral home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, as the casino industry promised an economic turnaround if voters would just give them the right to exist. Almost every state is involved in some discussion of state-sponsored gambling.
I think there are bigger issues involved than how they are typically framed.
First of all, pro-gambling elected officials aren’t evil villains (necessarily). Yes, some of them are personally corrupt and poised to profit from the industry they are enabling. But many of these elected officials have good aims. They want to educate children, build infrastructure, and so on without raising a tax burden. I think gambling is an illusory way to do this, but, still, I acknowledge good intentions at the root of some of the cheerleaders for the industry.
But, unfortunately, I think both proponents and opponents of expanded gambling see this as merely a “values” issue. Of course conservative Christians don’t support gambling because they see gambling as immoral, so they want it illegal. These Christians also see drunkenness as immoral and so, if they could, the reasoning goes, they’d be right back at Prohibition.
But gambling isn’t merely a “values” issue. Neither is it primarily a “moral” issue, at least not in terms of what we typically classify as “moral values” issues. Gambling isn’t primarily a question of personal vice. If it were, we could simply ask our people to avoid the lottery tickets and horse-tracks, but leave it legal. Gambling is a social justice issue that defines how it is that we love our neighbors and uphold the common good.
Gambling is a form of economic predation. Gambling grinds the faces of the poor into the ground. It benefits multinational corporations while oppressing the lower classes with illusory promises of wealth, and with (typically) low-wage, transitory jobs that simultaneously destroy every other economic engine of a local community.
In the end, the casinos will leave. And they’ll leave behind a burned-over district with no thriving agricultural, manufacturing, or tourism economies. In the meantime, they leave behind the wreckage of “check-to-cash” loan sharks, pawn shops, prostitution, and 1-2-3 divorce courts.
Conservative Christians can’t talk about gambling, if we don’t see the bigger picture.
First of all, most of the “market” for gambling comes from those in despair, seeking meaning and a future. The most important thing a church can do to undercut the local casino is to preach the gospel. By that I don’t just mean how to get saved (although that’s certainly at the root of it). I mean the awe-filled wonder in the face of the really good news that Jesus is crucified and resurrected, the old dragon is overthrown.
Second, we must understand that gambling is an issue of economic justice. We can’t really address the gambling issue if we ignore the larger issue of poverty. Evangelicals who don’t care (as does Jesus, the prophets, and the apostles) about the poor can’t speak adequately to the gambling issues. By this I don’t simply mean caring about individual poor people but about the way social and political and corporate structures contribute to the misery of the impoverished (James 5:1-6). We will never get to the nub of the gambling issue if we don’t get at a larger vision of poverty and the limits of commercial power.
This means asking the state not to use acquisitiveness and covetousness to separate people from their means of living. But it also means modeling a different kind of ethic in our churches. The power of gambling lies in a vision of the “good life,” and that’s a vision that is co-opted by the gambling industry, not created by them. It is fueled by our fallen vision of limitless growth, of limitless acquisition.
Let’s oppose state-empowered gambling, but let’s do so while loving the poor the industry seeks to devour. Let’s work toward rebuilding families, honoring honest labor, and encouraging the flourishing of communities in which the impoverished are not invisible.
Too many of our “opponents” see us as morally-prissy Victorians who don’t want people doing “naughty” things in our presence. Let’s demolish that pretense, by being the gritty colony of the kingdom that sees the economically downtrodden among us as, when in Christ, “heirs of the kingdom” (Jas. 2:5). And let’s hold out a vision, for all of us, of an inheritance that comes not through predation, and not through luck, but through sonship, through grace.
23 Responses to “Gambling and the Common Good”
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- Treading Grain » Post Topic » Around the Horn: 2.16.12
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“Gambling is a social justice issue that defines how it is that we love our neighbors and uphold the common good.” Precisely! And on top of that it is a false hope, a lie that promises riches and the easy life if only one is “lucky” enough to win. Even secularists should be able to see that this deludes people, and often it is someone already otherwise oppressed and who is least able to afford the consequences of that delusion.
Gambling separates people from God because it substitutes luck for the Lord. That is one sad reality. The good news is that we can combat this with the Good News itself, as you say. Jesus said he came to set captives free (Luke 4:16-21), and those captives include the poor folks buying lottery tickets with their kids’ milk money or blowing the rent at the casinos.
Tim
Hi Russell,
I’m new to your blog and I enjoyed this post. I also live in Kentucky and I share some of your concerns about gambling coming to this state. It is inevitable that some level of expanding gambling is coming to Kentucky.
I agree with your approach that we should educate the people that the casinos target rather than targeting the actual laws and law makers. The casinos will be built and its probably better that the casinos are built! Yes, you read that correctly. Prohibitions never work. It didn’t work with alcohol, it is not going to work with drugs, and it won’t work with gambling.
If all gambling were illegal, do we really want degenerates with broken legs and arms or even worse, being killed because they can’t honor a private gambling debt? While the casino may have rigged the odds in their favor, they at least give you a chance to win. If you are in a private gambling game that isn’t regulated by the state, how do you even know if you have a chance to win at all? You could be getting hustled! You are correct in your assessment that casinos prey on the most vulnerable. Organized crime sees this as well and will exploit this to their best abilities. Also, organized criminals aren’t paying taxes.
As you are aware, if you are in Louisville, you can drive less than hour and find yourself at a casino where you can wager on your favorite carnival game. While this may be the epitome of the boulevard of broken dreams, people will still foolishly throw away their money if there is a casino nearby or not.
I’ve always compared gambling to playing a game of tennis in a busy highway. Yes, you can survive, and sometimes you won’t be hit by a car… and you should celebrate every time you aren’t hit by a car (winning at the casino)… but most of the time, if you are chasing that tennis ball in the middle of a busy highway, you will get hit by a car (losing at the casino). What does getting hit by a car and gambling have to do with each other? It’s a risk in which you can be successful, but the success rates are extremely slim and you fail, the damage is often catastrophic.
We are creatures of free will and the government doesn’t need to legislate personal morality. We must leverage our own morality between ourselves and the Holy Father.
What I’ve found to be helpful is showing gamblers wiser ways to manage and invest their money. This tends to stem their gambling passion. I’ve heard so many people tell me… “Well, isn’t the stock market gambling? I’m still trying to recover from the collapse of 2008.”
It’s funny when people bring that up. The stock market is something that you CAN gamble on… and no one wants to admit it. If you are not making positive expectation decisions, you are gambling… no matter where the activity is located. It can be a smoke filled casino, on your brokerage account, and even opening a new business could be considered a gamble.
Going back to my point about stocks… Would you rather bank your retirement on XYZ inc’s penny stock or a mix of the top 50 industries in the world? Simple! XYZ penny stock is a gamble. A huge gamble! It’s a penny stock for a reason!
However, investing in a mutual fund that hedges your risks and has a proven track record of profitable returns is a smart investment!
There is a huge difference! Just because people put their money in the stock market doesn’t mean they aren’t gambling.
In fact, when you are at walmart and see you see children put 50 cents into a machine that has a claw and you get to control the claw and it drops down and almost ALWAYS misses the teddy bear by just an iota? Is that not an example of rigging the odds against the consumer? The fact of the matter is, we must be better stewards of our money.
We must train our children from a very young age about money. Often, money is just given out to kids for junk. Here’s $1.50 for a soda. Here’s $5 for big mac and fries. Need a new iPhone? What’s a few hundred? We must fix the problem early and teach our kids that money is sacred and should not be wasted. We must show our kids that you can successfully earn money by investing rather than taking irrational risks. This can also taught to adults and it can be done with high success rates.
Out of some of the gamblers I know… One of them will gladly find $500 to throw away at the craps table… but he won’t have $20 to buy some cheap food to get him through the week. It’s sad… but closing down or opposing casinos isn’t going to fix his issues. He’ll find some way or some how to gamble his money away because he has the sickness of a degenerate.
What’s wrong with being a morally-prissy Victorian?
Very good!
This is exactly what we should learn how to articulate our faith in the public sphere. Evil is good at tempting, entertaining, advertising but weak at good reasons. By being capable of good reasoning we can unmask the vanity of short term strategies of profit orineted forces. Go ahead sobern Calvinists there is a lot to do! Arpad from Hungary
Spent $20 once just to say we did it in New Orleans. We were SO out of our element.
Then there is Oakland, CA, that wants more medical marijana establishments for more revenue.
The casino industry is built on those people with big money to lose Dr. Moore. Any look down Las Vegas blvd would tell you that a billion dollar resort isn’t being built on the backs of people playing penny slots. Does the casino industry prey upon the poor? Absolutely, however, the casino industry preys on those people who have money and who can get more money. It’s an equal opportunity destroyer. As someone who almost lost everything I had to gambling, and if you knew the circumstances you’d probably regard it as a true miracle, including my home, I can tell you the people coming and going from the casinos are those with money and time to spare and therein lies the insidious nature of gambling - we see no harm in it.
- Should churches pay school taxes to better educate people for higher-paying jobs and/or suitable money management behaviors so they do not become “poor” in the first place?
- Should we adopt state-run churches and purely socialistic politics so there is no such thing as “lower classes”?
- How much does a Senior Vice President make in your profession and why do you have such a corporate title? Do you take only what you need for expenses and then give the rest of it directly to poor families, or is your bank happy to have your account?
- Do you or your church have an investment account that holds stock in multinational corporations? Do any of your parishioners have retirement accounts with stock in multinational corporations? If so, do you discourage them from this? Where does the Bible talk about investing only in American companies?
—In the end, the casinos will leave. And they’ll leave behind a burned-over district with no thriving agricultural, manufacturing, or tourism economies. — Where has this happened in past century? I want to read about these places and their poor leadership. Define “thriving”. America as a whole is not doing so hot right now. The places in the world that appear to be thriving economically are run by Muslims and Buddhists.
—In the meantime, they leave behind the wreckage of “check-to-cash” loan sharks, pawn shops, prostitution, and 1-2-3 divorce courts. — These already exist in the heart of Kentucky with casinos nowhere in sight.
@Austin 3:16, Austin, you look no further than Atlantic City, NJ to see the wasteland the casinos have left there. Once a thriving city, post-casino, there are no bowling alleys, theatres, car washes and few grocery stores. All those who had means to “escape” left and mostly those who are the working poor are left to the aftermath. When doing some research on this when our city was looking at bringing the casinos in, we found very interesting things! The money promised to schools is quickly used up by legislature and the now diverted funds they previously used to support public schools are left to the uncertain ups and downs of the gaming industry. In our own church we had a young maintenance worker who used up most of his paycheck to buy lottery tickets. Did he ever win? Occasionally, he got paid back a few bucks, but never even close to the amount he had spent on the unlikely possibility of actually winning big. Some casinos even rig their slots so that they actually pay out more than when left to chance, because they know folks needs to see someone winning often enough to keep them playing. The claims at how they will bring in money to the state are totally misleading. The jobs they provide are minimum wage jobs and most of the money taken in is then shipped out to their “headquarters” located in some other state. There is no upside to gambling. Just like predatory lenders in the payday industry, their goal it to get people hooked and thus locked in a debt spiral that is difficult, if not impossible to get out of.
“By this I don’t simply mean caring about individual poor people but about the way social and political and corporate structures contribute to the misery of the impoverished (James 5:1-6). ” I’ve heard this bantered about for a while now, and I’d like a serious account - not just anecdotal - about how this actually happens, and how to fix it without resorting to outdated protectionism or some other dead-end economic policy. Not saying it isn’t a problem, but it is a hard problem to quantify without denying agency to the people involved, or without hamstringing the entire country’s economy (see Michigan’s disastrous economy vis a vis union bargain making, etc.)
“By this I don’t simply mean caring about individual poor people but about the way social and political and corporate structures contribute to the misery of the impoverished (James 5:1-6). ” I’ve heard this said before, but I’m eager to hear someone flesh it out more. What does this actually mean, in real time? This seems to be difficult to quantify without a. diminishing the agency of the people involved or b. developing some outdated economic policy that ostensibly protects blue-collar jobs but has the long-term effect of hamstringing the economy, in much the same way that Detroit has ruined Michgain.
Economic predation is correct. The gambling industry functions as a parasite to existing prosperity. It does not foster any growth but can only take from the existing wealth without replacing it. I would venture to say that gambling also destroys economic opportunity not by simply taking from the poor, but also from the rich.
Instead of the rich risking their capital in the private sector on more worthy and productive pursuits, it is being frivolously thrown away for sport. The poor are not only robbed of the little they have in the process, but of greater opportunities that potentially arise from the rich risking their capital in much more constructive ways. Often when the rich invest, jobs are created.
Also Politicians are often in support of gambling, because its a way of introducing an indirect tax upon an economy without the political baggage. They don’t have to suffer the fallout of their decision when its left to a vote and they can tax gaming after the money is already forfeit. While I realize not all politicians are evil, few are ever economically virtuous. They would rather sacrifice real prosperity for the sake of expediency.
Unfortunately Kentucky’s leadership, like many other states, is tied to the old economic thinking and the average citizen is none the wiser.
Well done Dr. Moore. Thank you for writing about the other side of the issue. The effects of gambling on the poor and how the Body of Christ, needs to address that component is critical. I don’t hear my Conservative brothers address this side of the argument very often. As a pastor I stand in agreement with your statement that we need to preach the gospel and steer away from the notion that being a Christian is only supposed to bring the so called “good life”.
I find it curious that you oppose gambling on social justice grounds, but your only reference to social justice is “asking the state not to use acquisitiveness and covetousness to separate people from their means of living”. That sounds a lot like “tax cuts for the rich” to me, and has little to do with the teachings of the Old Testament prophets or the New Testament Jesus, who you claim to follow.
I also find it curious you would ban alcohol on moral grounds if you could, despite the disastrous results of prohibition in the 1920s and despite the fact that your only major religious allies on that issue would be Mormons and Muslims, two groups with which you have little common doctrinal ground.
Therefore, I suspect your commitment to social justice is no greater than your commitment to religious liberty - a convenient buzzword when it advances your particular worldview and its doctrines and just as conveniently ignored when it does not.
@John Beckett,
Dr. Moore doesn’t say he would go back to Prohibition. He says: “Of course conservative Christians don’t support gambling because they see gambling as immoral, so they want it illegal. These Christians also see drunkenness as immoral and so, if they could, the reasoning goes, they’d be right back at Prohibition.”
His use of the word “they” rather than “we” suggests that he doesn’t include himself in the group of people wanting to return to that era. In fact, his point was that many Christians limit gambling and drinking to issues of morality and the thrust of his post is that gambling goes beyond morality into a social justice issue.
And, I’m curious about how you got tax cuts for the rich out of his asking the state not to separate people from their means of living, especially since he was specifically talking about poor people.
Finally, if you have read enough or listened to much of Dr. Moore, you wouldn’t doubt his commitment to social justice. I don’t agree with him on everything, but I will testify to his commitment to that area.
Dr. Moore,
The article is a great starting point. I am ministering in rural western New York where jobs are scarce and money is tight. We have a large number of people on welfare assistance and many use their money to “better themselves” with “investments the lottery at OTB (Off Track Betting) Native American Casinos and local horse tracks.
The state is looking hard at legalizing casino style “gaming” (they never use the term gambling) and never fully deal with the results of the addiction of gambling and the fall out from that addiction.
What are some specific ways that we can “fight” this issue?
Your fellow doulos,
Gregg Marston