Biggest Casino Makes a Deal with A Minnow

Gamble Away

Historically, gambling has been judged sinful, evil, a violation of God's law.  The question is, On what grounds?

One modern school of thought is that gambling is just another form of entertainment--a kind of competitive sport by proxy.  Just as one goes to the cinema, one can attend the local horse racing meet, place bets to give some "edge" to the entertainment, and thereby make the whole experience more participatory, exciting and diverting.  At the other edge is professional poker playing, which clearly is a participative, competitive sport, requiring finely honed skills to be successful.  We grant both points. 

For the Christian, the issue is not one of entertainment: there are plenty of ways to relax and find exhilarating enjoyment.  The issues are stewardship, covetousness, and the love of money--which is the root of all kinds of evil (I Timothy 6:10).
  To be sure, one can have very little money and love it exceedingly.  One can also have a great deal of money and love it not at all.  The thing that makes the difference is stewardship.  The Christian is never to regard himself as the original and ultimate owner of anything.  All he has comes from the Lord and belongs to the Lord.  He is nothing more than a steward, a fiduciary, who must give an account to the King for his faithful use or unfaithful abuse of the Lord's property. (The same holds true for the Unbeliever of course.    He too must give an account to the King for all that he has done with his property, his money.  The Unbeliever, however, rejects this overlordship of Jesus Christ.  He will consequently rue the Day.)

At root, gambling is a construct where, in order to win, one must take your neighbour's property without contributing any good or service to your neighbour in exchange.  The transaction is not a purchase or sale.  Moreover, it is always a zero-sum game: in order for there to be winners there have to be losers.  The winners win at the expense of the losers.  Instead of the transaction doing good to your neighbour, it most often does harm. 

Moreover, people usually participate in gambling matches/games with a covetous attitude: they want the property of their neighbours.  They are not offering anything in exchange for their neighbour's property.  They do not wish to buy it.  They want to extract it in an involuntary way.  There is no consumer guarantee protections in a gambling game.  The Christian knows that such attitudes and behaviours are evil.

But should gambling and running gambling games be a crime?  We do not believe so.  There is a distinction to be made between sins and crimes.  Whilst (in a Christianised world) all crimes must be sins, not all sins are crimes.  In fact, very few are. Pagans will engage in gambling because they disbelieve the God who numbers the very hairs on their head.  As a consequence they will continue to give expression to their inner covetousness, idolatry, and envy.  As a further result they will become more enslaved to sin.  It is the way of the Gentile. 

The government of New Zealand protects, supports, subsidises, regulates, and profits from gambling.  The wowsers (for that is what we believe they are) are angry at the Key Government because of (what they see as) a Faustian bargain with a casino in our largest city, Auckland.  The casino will fund a new national convention centre: the Government will allow them more gaming machines.  We would find the wowser's case more persuasive if it were not so hypocritical.  They do not reject gambling per se, but (presumably--they are rather vague on the matter) Big-Business gambling is objectionable.  Gambling in bars, sports clubs, the race track, and bingo-clubs is just fine.  Lotto--the government owned and run national lottery--is just fine too.  But casinos represent Big-Business, profits, extraction, and, therefore, implicit theft.

The hypocrisy is a foul noisome stench.  We have no truck with casinos.  In our view they are on the same moral par as an opium den.  But we reject the foul babble of a mob who believe gambling is an an intrinsically moral act and yet bray against someone making money from it, covering their hypocrisy with a gaudy cloak of self-righteousness.  

According to one columnist in the NZ Herald,  in a scathing indictment of the Government's Faustian pact:

The Problem Gambling Foundation says one in six New Zealanders say a family member has gone without something they need or a bill has gone unpaid because of gambling.

Really.  One in six New Zealanders has to include the evil influence of Lotto, our government run lottery.   That wretched institution does far, far more harm nationwide than the Auckland casino ever will.  So, we are waiting for Fran O'Sullivan to turn her rhetorical cannons upon the ubiquitous institution of real gambling evil in New Zealand that holds hundreds of  thousands of people in its thrall.  That makes the Government the biggest casino operator in the country by a country mile.  It is precisely those who are living from hand to mouth who find Lotto so attractive; it is precisely those families who go hungry or cannot pay their bills because of the rush to buy the weekly tickets.

We will wait in vain.  Lotto's fun, after all.  Everybody buys Lotto tickets.  It's only a bit of money.  Just an entertaining little flutter.  Gives everyone something to look forward to. 

Spare us the hypocritical rubbish.  Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.