GAMBLING - SHOWS THE HYPOCRISY OF RELIGION

Some Christian religions teach that all forms of gambling are wrong. The Roman Catholic Church permits it when there is no addiction and when the risks and loss are insignificant.
 
Gambling is thought to be wrong because it is based on gaining things through chance rather than earning them through work or virtue – in other words a form of greed. We can’t see how holy a person is because everybody hides their bad side and they will fool us better if they get all the prizes for it.
 
If there is a God, we are his work and his property. It is because we consider ourselves to be our own property that we abuse our bodies to a safe or near-safe level. Clearly then mild abuse of the self such as what is involved in gambling is a sin if there is a God.

Gambling is not wrong because we can get something for nothing for getting things free is part of life.

Christians may oppose gambling because it is someone else’s loss and your gain. But that’s life. You don’t have to apply for a good job and when you do it you are trying to keep it from other people and get it yourself. When you go for a job you tailor the information about yourself so that you will be saying what you think the interviewers wish to hear. You are trying to take it from a person who would be better than you but who is having a bad day and who won’t do as well at the interview. You are trying to get a job that somebody could need more than you. The Church might say what can you do? But thought they were against lying and promoting error? So they allow it when it is manipulating interviewers, do they?

Christians may oppose gambling for it is an unnecessary risk but that would only apply to the persons who risk what they cannot afford to lose.

Christians may oppose gambling because it is trying to get money all for yourself and your family instead of trying to do some good with it or because crime rises over it. But it could be good to get the money and abusing it does not mean that winning was a bad thing.

Buying insurance or playing the stock market is taking an unnecessary risk as it is in gambling because it is giving money away for an accident that may not happen.

Let us look at the texts that Christians falsely say are against gambling.

Proverbs 28:8 and 28:20 can only be taken to denounce gambling if you presuppose that it is unjust.

To covet is to wish that you could get what belongs to another by unjust means. 1 Timothy 6:10 and Exodus 20:17 forbid coveting. Is gambling coveting? It can’t be for it is desiring what others consent to be given away if they lose. However gambling can be motivated by envy and it would be wrong then.

Gambling in big money is irrational and it leads to stealing for many cannot resist the urge to do it so the person who gets their money is stealing it. Gambling is okay only when it involves insignificant amounts of money and is more for entertainment than for winning and when it can’t rouse ill feeling.

The Methodist Church tends to be very anti-gambling. The bizarre thing is that they will see things like the National Lottery as immoral and yet they approve of charities taking the money that the Lottery raises for them! Though they will agree that taking the money encourages the sin of the Lottery they will say it is also immoral for the money to be lying unused. The teaching of the New Testament is that evil must never be dressed up as good which is what is happening if the money is taken. The charities taking the money makes the gambling look respectable and the gamblers feel better about what they are doing. It is hypocrisy to take the money and refuse to take money from a good-hearted prostitute who sells herself to help others though the Church says taking her money is definitely a sin and implies approval of what she is doing. If you don’t approve of gambling and take the profits of gambling then you must wish these profits never existed at all or by some other way which makes you a hypocrite for taking them.