Volume 7, Issue 5, March 1998

GAMBLING EXALTS SELFISHNESS

Gambling is the vice of the speculator, the person who likes to take chances. Those who indulge in it describe it as gaming, playing a game for a prize or a stake.

Today, with the emphasis upon subjecting our economy to the whims of the marketplace, gambling becomes a part of our way of life.

Competition and winning viciously creates winners and losers. It is simple, and rather natural, to carry this modus operandi to our recreational life as well.

Competitive commerce breeds gambling, and both exalt selfishness. It pits people against one another in a gladiatorial game in which there is no mercy and in which the majority lose out.

Our competitive life has so deeply warped our moral judgment that it is becoming commonplace for greed and self-preservation to overthrow loyalty and sharing. It is easy to fail to realize that ones winnings are at the expense of others losing. It becomes evil when it is exploited to redistribute wealth without relation either to merit or to responsibility.

Moral decay starts within individuals and introduces a process of decay which nothing can stop except moral and spiritual regeneration.

As Mark Twain wrote, there are two times in a person's life when they should not gamble; when one can afford it, and when one can't.

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.