What's Wrong With Gambling?

My last post drew a comment from Scott Roche: "Of course gambling is no longer seen as a sin by most Christians. Just out of curiosity, what would you use to justify that it is?" I found the comment last night, but was too tired to respond then. I also wanted time to think about it before writing about it.

It is true that gambling is not directly condemned in the Bible as some other activities are--drunkenness, adultery, and so on. And C.S. Lewis had one of his characters point out in "The Pilgrim's Regress" that God Himself could be considered an inveterate gambler--He takes risks to accomplish His purposes, risks that apparently He considers worthwhile. And on the human level, there are many risk-taking situations in business and other areas that could be thought of as gambling.

But I do think there is a significant difference between the risk-taking mentioned above and the gambling for money--poker in its various forms, slot machines, betting on the horses, numbers games, state lotteries, etc.--that go on today. (The way some people play the stock market could be included too.)

Scott, my first approach to answering your question is to do as Jesus often did and ask you a question in return: How does taking someone's money at cards or with dice fit in with "Love your neighbor as yourself"? Or "Love one another as I have loved you"? How do you seriously love someone and yet take his money? (And if you think the corporations who run the casinos and manage the lotteries are still fair game, go back and look up what Jesus said about the quibbling the scribes and Pharisees used to get around the Law at times. Corporations are a legal fiction in our culture, but they still have people involved--shareholders, employees, management--and they may punish those who lose too much of their money.)

The other conclusion I come to is that gambling for money comes under the heading of "coveting" which is the subject of the tenth Commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Ex. 20:17, NASB) "Anything that belongs to your neighbor" would include his cash. I was taught in a theology class that the Ten Commandments are rooted in the nature of God Himself: He is truth, so lying is wrong; He is faithful, so adultery is wrong; and because He is generous, coveting is wrong. The New Testament both condemns coveting and encourages generosity in the followers of Christ. If a Christian goes into a casino or a "friendly" card game with the expectation of coming out with more money than he carried in, he's probably coveting.
(Of course, I can only say "probably", but God knows the heart--for sure.)

One other standard of evaluation, advanced by Jesus: Look at the fruit. What has been the fruit of gambling in Dearborn County, Indiana? Well, the local governments and the state definitely have more money than before--the town of Lawrenceburg and the county have spent money like drunken sailors for the last ten years (they've also had to fend off attempts by the state to increase its share and reduce theirs). The state seems to go from one fiscal crisis to another, so the casinos have not been a real help. Lawrenceburg and Dearborn County have more problems with drunken driving and crime than they used to--they had to expand the capacity of the local court system to handle the increase. There are a lot of ads offering help for people with gambling problems. And since there are now three riverboat casinos in three consecutive counties, the one in the middle is struggling at times because the other two siphon off so much of the traffic. I really can't say the results are that impressive.

By the way, Scott's statement that "gambling is no longer seen as a sin by most Christians" fits in with something I did say in that last post: that too many churches are full of "churchgoers" rather than disciples of Jesus.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

I have been thinking about my last post, and the comment that it came from. And I ended up looking back at one of the events that prepared me to think about the problems in today's church structures and practices.

Back in the mid-'90s we were living in Dearborn County, Indiana, on the Ohio River just west of Cincinnati, Ohio. The state of Indiana had recently decided to have riverboat gambling on the Ohio River, and various counties were deciding whether or not to get involved. Dearborn County's officials chose to pursue it, and the issue was put on the ballot.

Now Dearborn County was a changing area. The eastern part was turning into suburbs of Cincinnati, with subdivisions filling in the open spaces. The towns--Greendale, Lawrenceburg, and Aurora, were picking up some new residents from the city, but hadn't visibly changed yet. The western half- to two-thirds of the county was still predominantly rural.

It also appeared to be as religious as any other small-town/rural area. There were the usual mainline Protestant churches in the towns, and a Catholic church in Lawrenceburg. There were a couple of megachurches in Bright, up in the suburban area near the Ohio line, a Methodist one and a Christian Church/Church of Christ. And the countryside was dotted with church buildings, mostly of the traditional denominations--Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and a sprinkling of others. They weren't on every crossroads, but there were plenty of them.

There was an appearance of strength of religious faith in the area. And when the ballot issue on riverboat gambling came up, nearly all the churches opposed it. (And it wasn't often they agreed on much.) Yet when the vote came, the gambling issue sailed right through, regardless of the opposition of the churches. Within a year the casino was open. The churches of Dearborn County were not as strong as they appeared to be.

I guess this event caused me to look a little closer. I began to notice that those numerous country churches mostly had only six to ten cars in the lot on Sunday morning. I got wind of a Methodist pastor and his wife, also a pastor, who served two churches each to make a living. Former church buildings in the region ended up with new uses.

And to be quite honest, that gambling initiative could not have passed without the votes of a significant number of churchgoers. That leads me to think that many churchgoers are not living lives shaped by their faith, but by the general culture. The church system in this country has for many years been producing churchgoers, but not real disciples.

Since that time, I've seen a lot more: surveys documenting that most Christians live pretty much like their non-Christian neighbors, estimates of 20,000 churches that will close their doors in the next decade or two, church leaders who don't live and behave like Christians...the list could go on and on. But things started getting a lot more obvious to me after that election.

A Basic Question

I've been participating in some discussion on Steve Sensenig's blog, Theological Musings. and Steve paid me what I guess is the blogger's ultimate compliment: he took my comment and made it into a guest post in its own right. While I don't know that I should put the whole discussion here, I am putting up the new post here on my own blog. So here goes:

Looking back at this whole discussion, I come back to this basic question–What is Christianity? Is it
(a) a set of activities in a sacred place on Sunday morning, with a list of tenets to be subscribed to as a condition of participation, coupled with rules for behavior, enforced by the official leadership

or

(b) a way of living, every day, 24/7, in relationship with Jesus Himself, and with others who also are in relationship with Him.

Going through the words of Jesus Himself in the Gospels, I cannot find anything that leads to (a); in fact, he often rebuked the leaders of the (a) system of the day. I grew up in churches, have been in churches all my life, and my conclusion now is that in most situations, the more of (a) you have, the less you have of (b); in fact, (a) tends to replace and eliminate (b)!

How did “Abide in me” come to mean “Be at the church building every time the doors are open”?

If you want to improve your relationship with someone, say your wife, do you go off to an auditorium and sit while someone who claims to know her better than you do lectures for half an hour? Or would the time be better spent going somewhere alone with your wife and conversing with her for half an hour? Which really builds the relationship with her?

I’m afraid most humans are too lazy for their own good. We’d rather have a list of rules to keep than try to walk in the Spirit. We want a doctrinal statement to assent to rather than trying to learn to hear His voice ourselves. The Hebrews started it at Mt. Sinai–they wanted Moses to hear God for them.

And for those who would say “It’s some of each, both (a) and (b)” my question is How can it be both, when (a) eliminates (b)? I think, and I suspect [frequent commenter] ded would agree (based on what he’s written here), that they are two different things, coming from two different sources. If God meant it to be a symbiosis, it would be a stable symbiosis, not constantly drifting in one direction.

To look at it another way: What has been the “fruit” of (a) in this country? Do we have a vibrant church that is transforming its culture? Are non-believers coming to Christ in droves? Are believers “turning the world upside down”?

Or is the picture more like this: “Our bookshelves are full of Christian books and videos. We have churches on every major street, more staff workers than ever before, large Sunday school departments, cell systems, mega- and meta-church seminars. We have Christian bumper stickers, political action groups, huge parachurch ministries–and in the midst of it all, we have lost every major city in North America.” Back in 1999, Wolfgang Simson included that quote from Ted Haggard in his book “Houses that Change the World”.

Maybe we do need to lay aside everything that’s been written since and go back to the New Testament for our original instructions.

Bob Girard Has Gone Home

Most people may never have heard of him. He wasn't a big-name speaker or denominational executive. He didn't found a megachurch, didn't land in one of the "hot rock" pulpits. He didn't have a radio or tv show. But for many of us who read his two small books back in the 1970s, his words were a breath of fresh air, and had a profound influence on some of us.

Bob Girard was a Wesleyan pastor in Arizona who had the courage to follow God's leading out of "church as usual" and into uncharted territory. He got fed up with programs and began to look for better ways to live as Christians. He found some things out, restructured his congregation for small groups, and eventually they gave their building back to the denomination and operated as a network of house churches. The thing folded later, but their influence lives on. Bob's two books, "Brethren, Hang Loose" and "Brethren, Hang Together," are still being sold on Amazon.com. Many of us who got into small group life in churches in the 70s read his books and learned from them; his writing helped us avoid many pitfalls and saved a lot of headaches. He had to learn to let go and trust the Holy Spirit to lead through others, something many pastors never learn at all.

Anyway, many years and additional books later (and for me and my wife, quite a few churches and small groups later), Bob Girard has gone home. He left this life on June 19 of this year. I found out about it almost accidentally, because I clicked on a link to the blog of the writer of an article I had just read. That eventually led me to his obituary, the blog of one of his family members, and a website that has now been started for him. He seems to have quite a legacy: a fairly large family of children and grandchildren and their spouses (looks like quite a few of them are still strong in the faith) and an untold number of spiritual children who follow in his steps today.

Going It Alone?

There are some things in the Christian life you can't do alone. You can pray alone, you can sing alone (for some people, that's a plus!) you can read your Bible alone, you can listen to teaching and preaching alone through the modern miracles of radio and recording. But have you ever tried to do the Lord's Supper alone? It's pretty lame.

Even the name "Communion" says you can't do it alone. It comes from the same Latin root as the words "common" and "community,' which has its base in the Greek word "koinonia," which means "in common" or "fellowship." It's something you do as a group, not alone.

While I'm on this subject, I'll say a bit about the communion practice at one particular church we were in back in the late 1970s and early '80s. We allowed plenty of time for the Lord's Supper (this was before the church growth experts or the seeker-friendly churches --whoever it was-- decided services shouldn't be longer than an hour or so). We'd sing a song, have a meditation and prayer, and then instead of passing the elements, we went up to get them. A father might get them for his whole family and take them back to the seats. Or the whole family might go up together. Friends might go up together. Occasionally friends who had been at odds during the week would go up together and use the opportunity to make peace and seal it with Communion. People might kneel and pray up front before partaking. And however long it took, the rest of us just went on worshipping. It was very relaxed. And yet very important. And in most of the churches we've been in since, it has always felt rushed, and it seems to me, regarded as less important than the sermon. And that bugs me, because the New Testament in at least one spot uses the language "On the first day of the week, when the disciples met together to break bread...." That sounds to me like their real reason for meeting was not the sermon, but the Lord's Supper. I'm afraid that in most churches the sermon has, implicitly or explicitly, been regarded as the center of the service (many churches only have Communion at all a few times a year) when Biblically it is not central, and may not have been a standard part of the first-century church at all.

More on Fruit

Last Tuesday evening our small group was discussing the weekend's sermon, which was about joy, one of the fruits of the Spirit. During the talking, something struck me. We often talk about "feeling" joy. But really, if you look closely at the various fruits of the Spirit, they aren't feelings, they are attitudes. And attitudes are something we choose. We can even change them. Sometimes we choose unconsciously, without thinking. But they are chosen, not something determined by our circumstances.

Sometimes in raising our kids we had to push them to examine their attitudes toward things, and maybe persuade them to change their attitudes in particular areas. And it often worked quite well.

But what about the feelings? Well, if you bring your attitudes around to what they ought to be, the feelings will usually come around after a while. Feelings are useful followers--they make lousy leaders.

Monuments

Some years ago I came up with what I call the "Monument Theory of Church History." It works like this: In every generation, God is doing something; people are drawn to it, and after some years, most sit down at that spot and build a monument to what God did. One result of this is that the landscape is littered with Christian monuments to God's past activity--Lutheran monuments, Presbyterian monuments, Methodist monuments, Christian Church/Church of Christ monuments (the one I grew up in), Pentacostal monuments...all over the map. Even the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s produced a few. The Vineyard churches grew out of that time, and while John Wimber, their most prominent leader, lived they stayed vital. But he died in 1997, and five or six years after that I began to see signs that the concrete was starting to set. (We spent about 10 years in Vineyard churches in Cincinnati and in Batesville, In.)

The trouble is, while people are building monuments, God moves on and does something else, usually in a different spot, with different leaders, different focus, different aspect of truth He wants to highlight. And I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I don't want to spend the rest of my life polishing some monument; I'd rather be part of what God is doing now. Yes, it is great that God did something in this spot maybe 20 years ago; but the monument that's been erected here, while very nice, is not Him--and I want to be where He is now.

There's a place in south-central Kentucky, about 10 miles or so from the Tennessee line, called Red River Meeting House. Around 1787 a log Presbyterian church was built there. The region was known as "Rogues' Harbor" for the lawlessness of its inhabitants (travelers often disappeared while passing through). After several years of prayer by the small group of faithful Christians in the area, a Communion service in 1800 set off a major revival, the first of the frontier camp meetings. A visiting clergyman hosted another event at his church at Cane Ridge in northern Kentucky, and what the historians call the Second Great Awakening was well under way (the first was in the mid-1700s, involving John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and others.). "Rogues' Harbor" changed its character and lost the name, and became known for hospitality to strangers. It also became a center of anti-slavery activity--slave owners who had believed Negroes to be not fully human and without souls saw the Holy Spirit falling on whites and blacks alike and were convinced that they had been wrong about slavery.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a small denomination that formed out of the camp meetings, still owns the property. The original log church was followed by several buildings (the original log building's site is now part of the cemetery). When the last of them was disintegrating in the 1950s, and the congregation no longer existed, a group of local people partnered with the Cumberland P.C. to preserve it as a historic site. A replica of the log church was built on part of the remaining open land (and replaced in the 1970s after vandals burned the first one). In October each year a weekend commorative gathering in honor of the original camp meeting is held by a mixed group of local people and historical reenactors. There is still a feeling of peace that hangs over the grounds.

We (me, my wife Miriam, and my younger son Caleb) were part of the commemorative gatherings for several years. Caleb and I were part of the impromptu band that played for the services, we camped with the reenactors, we enjoyed ourselves there. But there came a time when we concluded that it was time to put our energy into what God is doing now. It isn't that monuments are wrong; but sometimes a good thing crowds out better things. We need to learn from the past, but we must live in the present, and if possible build for the future.

I once read an interview with Carol Wimber, John Wimber's widow. She said he was never that worried about the future of the Vineyard, but that his hope was that their kids would find what God was doing next and go be part of it. I think he was right.