Introduction: What's All the Fuss?

   Three-fourths of all Americans queried in a variety of polls now "see nothing wrong with gambling." If you share that sentiment as a Christian, you are the victim of a massive confidence game that is draining the moral, spiritual and — yes, even the financial resources of our nation.

   No, this is not a book about some satanic Communist plot to enslave us to the Russians, but it is about a devilish and deliberate conspiracy. It is a cry of alarm, and it is intended for the ears of those naively willing to sacrifice their own integrity and the well-being of their children — plus generations yet to come — on the altar of gambling's empty promises.

A Notorious Human Weakness

   This book is an exposé of a plot that exploits human weakness in a felonious transfer of wealth from the pockets of those who cannot afford the loss to the pockets of those who purpose to have it all.

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   The field is fertile. During the course of any given year, two-thirds of all Americans wager money — legally or otherwise — on some sort of chance outcome. Most of them lose, but that doesn't stop them from betting. The money that changes hands each year in illegal betting alone now surpasses the preposterous total of our national deficit. The ranks of sick, tormented, compulsive gamblers in our society are expanding at a rate that terrifies psychologists and social workers whose job it is to pick up the pieces. If the trend continues, human devastation through the sinister addiction of gambling will surpass even the agony spawned by chronic drunkenness.

   It has not always been that way in America. Gambling has been regarded since time immemorial as a notorious defect of character, but public disapproval and the united testimony of Christians until now has limited its disruptive influence on our society. The laws against it at times were flouted and mocked, but they served to hold it in check.

   Today, in contrast, gambling fever is sweeping our nation. Too few seem to care; too many actually celebrate. Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to find even believers in Christ who are sure of their own convictions when the question of legalized gambling arises. Fanned by this ambivalence, the flames of decriminalized gambling continue to spread across our nation like some loathsome disease of the soul. Shockingly, that disease is welcomed far more often than it is shunned in too many segments of our society.

   Some on that irrational welcoming committee are Christians, and that is the most disturbing fact of all. The widespread acceptance of gambling — especially as a

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source of public revenue — threatens to erase yet another line of clear distinction between citizens of the Celestial City and those whose dwelling place is called Destruction. Too many have forgotten that neither the righteousness of God nor His will for His people is subject to the whims of public sentiment or the shifting sands of majority opinion.

I Write Because I Am Outraged

   I have written this book because I am both a Christian and an American, and under both of those classifications I am outraged. I am an evangelical; a former Presbyterian pastor and foreign missionary. I am an author, a marriage counselor and a business consultant. I am a conservative but not an obscurantist. I have tried my hand at gambling and listened respectfully and attentively to its proponents. I have interviewed also many of its victims. I have participated in two successful Florida campaigns under two governors to defeat proposed constitutional amendments to legalize casinos on a countywide basis. As a Christian and as an American, I must share my discoveries with others who care.

   When a woman pushes a cart heavily loaded with gourmet foods past a California checkout counter and pays for her groceries with food stamps, a meritorious welfare program is only mildly abused. When at the same counter she lays down a $20 bill for lottery tickets, an entire value system goes down the drain. An isolated incident? Perhaps. Yet a Christian who was next in line and who had voted for the lottery says the experience prompted a dramatic change — lamentably too late — in his point of view.

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   But is there a difference between a book on the evils of gambling and a book on the sinfulness of smoking, dancing, movies or the other shibboleths that fundamentalists opposed so vehemently a couple of decades ago? Have we not outgrown the legalism that prompted schism and distrust wherever the faithful laid down arbitrary rules and regulations for acceptable Christian behavior?

   Yes, I believe we have outgrown the legalism, and I intend to show you there is, indeed, a difference. What we will be talking about in the chapters that follow is not rules and regulations but greed, corruption, personal tragedy and the prostituting of an important principle of faith.

   I will show you the debilitating and often irreversible effects of the compromise known as gambling on the society we share and on the faith that binds us to God.

Chapter One  ||  Table of Contents