Gambling

[Guest Ammon]

Indeed, I love the craps table and the slots. Is that wrong? NO GAMBLING... commandment or "just good advice?"

[Guest lt]

A Latter-day Saint Look at Gambling

By Marvin K. Gardner

Assistant Managing Editor

Marvin K. Gardner, “ ‘Don’t Bet on It!’: A Latter-day Saint Look at Gambling,†Ensign, Mar. 1986, 12

So what’s wrong with spending a dollar for a chance to win a million? Or slipping a few cents into a slot machine, or cutting the cards, or tossing the dice? It’s all right, isn’t it, to place a friendly bet on the football game … or the horse race?

After all, you deserve a lucky break.

A lot of people are looking for that lucky break. And they’re willing to wager that fortune’s favor is just one more gamble away.

Legalized gambling is widely touted as an appropriate form of entertainment and a painless way for governments and organizations—even churches—to increase revenues. A 1982 Gallup poll showed that 82 percent of the American people approve of some form of gambling. (See Gaming Business, Nov. 1982, pp. 5-7.)

This trend is obvious in many countries around the world. In the United States, for example, gambling of one kind or another is already legal in forty-six of the fifty states; only Hawaii, Indiana, Mississippi, and Utah prohibit it—and proposed legislation would shorten even that brief list.

Government-operated lotteries are allowed in twenty-two states and in Washington, D.C., and legislators in other states are currently proposing additional state-run lotteries. Some officials even endorse a national lottery.

Thirty-six states allow pari-mutuel gambling—betting on such competitions as horse and dog races.

Casino gambling is legal on both sides of the country—in Nevada and in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And in January of this year, Louisiana’s governor encouraged legislators to legalize casino gambling in New Orleans and on Mississippi River cruise ships.

Should Latter-day Saints be concerned about this trend? What’s wrong with gambling if it is controlled and regulated? Proponents point to many noble benefits, such as a lower tax burden, more money for education and other worthy causes, and a way to fight illegal gambling and organized crime. And it provides a chance, they say, for average people to get rich quick.

If you don’t make a fortune, some people reason, at least you’ll have a good time.

Don’t bet on it! According to Latter-day Saint leaders, the stakes in gambling are too high. And the list of losers includes everyone who plays.

The Case against Gambling

President Brigham Young exhorted the Nauvoo Saints in 1845 to “put down†gambling and various other “abominations.†(See History of the Church, 7:350.) Later, addressing the practice of Relief Society sisters raffling homemade quilts and giving the profits to the needy, he stated that worthy causes should not be sullied by unworthy practices: “Tell the sisters not to raffle,†he said, adding that raffling is a form of gambling. “Rather let the quilts rot on the shelves than adopt the old adage, ‘The end will sanctify the means.’ As Latter-day Saints we cannot afford to sacrifice moral principle to financial gain.†(As quoted in Juvenile Instructor, 1 Oct 1902, p. 593.)

President Joseph F. Smith and his counselors gave similar direction, expressly prohibiting any Church organization from promoting games of chance: No form of gambling “is to be allowed or excused because the money so obtained is to be used for a good purpose,†they said. (Improvement Era, Dec. 1908, p. 144.)

“The Church has been and now is unalterably opposed to gambling in any form whatever,†said President Heber J. Grant and his counselors during the twenties. “It is opposed to any game of chance, occupation, or so-called business, which takes money from the person who may be possessed of it without giving value received in return. It is opposed to all practices the tendency of which is to encourage the spirit of reckless speculation, and particularly to that which tends to degrade or weaken the high moral standard which members of the Church, and our community at large, have always maintained.†(Improvement Era, Sept. 1926, p. 1100.)

Fifty years later, President Spencer W. Kimball gave the same message. “From the beginning we have been advised against gambling of every sort,†he said. And he specifically condemned state lotteries, which divert billions of dollars from worthwhile, charitable purposes. (See Ensign, May 1975, p. 6.) More recently, President Gordon B. Hinckley of the First Presidency again denounced state and federal lotteries: “There can be no question about the moral ramifications of this practice,†he said. “A lottery is a form of gambling, regardless of the high-sounding purpose it may be advocated to meet. …

“The question of lotteries is a moral question. That government now promotes what it once enforced laws against becomes a sad reflection on the deterioration of public and political morality in the nation.†(Ensign, Nov. 1985, p. 52.)

Why Fight It?

Some may object to such strong statements. What could it hurt, really, to do a little harmless gambling now and then? You don’t see people quitting their jobs just because they bought a lottery ticket. Why do we need to become involved in opposing it?

In 1972, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, then president of Brigham Young University, examined five reasons. Included in his discussion were such activities as playing cards for money and betting on horses. He also mentioned casino gambling, lotteries, raffles, bingo for money, and dice. (See Ensign, Nov. 1972, p. 47.)

“First, gambling weakens the ethics of work, industry, thrift, and service—the foundation of national prosperity—by holding out the seductive lure of something for nothing. By the same token, gambling encourages idleness, with all of its resulting bad effects for society.†(Dallin H. Oaks, Ensign, Nov. 1972, p. 45.)

The idea of getting gain without earning it is contrary to scriptural admonitions, both ancient and modern. Reward is clearly tied to labor. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,†Adam was told. (Gen 3:19.) “The labourer is worthy of his hire,†said the Savior. (Luke 10:7.) Blessings are for those who work with their talents—not for the idle. (See Matt. 25:24-28.)

Nephi taught his people to be industrious. (See 2 Ne. 5:17.) King Benjamin worked for his own living rather than burdening others. (See Mosiah 2:14.) Mosiah taught that “priests and teachers should labor with their own hands for their support.†(Mosiah 27:5.)

In our own day, the Lord told the Prophet Joseph Smith that the Church cannot be built up by those who expect others to support them: “He that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer.†(D&C 42:42.)

Gambling disregards this divine directive. Those who gamble are seeking to receive what they have not earned.

Even a small payoff is counter to the spirit of the work ethic. The size of the prize is irrelevant—even if the gambler breaks even. “The deterioration and damage comes to the person, whether he wins or loses, to get something for nothing, something without effort, something without paying the full price,†said President Spencer W. Kimball. (Ensign, May 1975, p. 6.)

In the process, the gambler’s view of reality—of the relationship between work and chance—can become distorted. Those who work for an honest living—and yet who gamble for that elusive stroke of luck—can misguide themselves into thinking that chance is the governing force in life. President Stephen L Richards said, “So obsessed do some people become with it that they cannot contemplate or think of any other way in which to increase their means and their income except by taking the chance that gambling affords.†(Where Is Wisdom? Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1955, p. 55.)

To some extent, this mistaken view of life is also encouraged by sweepstakes and giveaways promoted by some advertisers. Even though the consumer may not have to pay to enter the competition, he is enticed into playing a game of chance—and into believing that life and prosperity are determined by happenstance.

“A second evil of gambling is that it promotes greed and covetousness and inevitably involves and encourages the base practice of overreaching and taking from one’s neighbor.†(Oaks, p. 46.)

Greed is indeed a strong motivation for most gamblers. How many, when asked why they’ve bought lottery tickets, will respond that they’re doing it to pay for education and the care of the elderly?

Small winnings rarely satisfy. Lean payoffs usually increase the urge to try for higher and higher stakes. The odds are pretty good that the occasional gambler who plays the slot machines just for fun—to see how long a roll of coins will last—will keep going until both his initial investment and his “earnings†have disappeared. Even the $5.6 million winner in the 1982 New York lottery still buys lottery tickets—at $20 a shot—to get “another piece of the dream.†(Newsweek, 2 Sept. 1985, p. 18.)

One reason greed is so devastating is that it leads the gambler to try to get rich at someone else’s expense. As President Stephen L Richards said, gambling “proceeds upon the assumption that one has to lose for another to gain.†(Where Is Wisdom? Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1955, p. 54.)

This is true for everything from the penny-ante poker game, where the loser is out only a few cents, to the horse race, where lifetime savings can be lost by the margin of a few millimeters.

How can activities of this kind be condoned in light of the Savior’s commandment to love one another? And how can the loser help but covet what he has lost—as well as what he hasn’t gained?

Greed and covetousness can be especially damaging to human relationships when friends compete against friends for material gain. When all participants in a game pay an equal amount for a chance at the prize, some losers may resent their loss—and feelings of good-will can easily dissipate.

President Brigham Young understood this possibility. When urging the Relief Society against raffling quilts to benefit the poor, he suggested that the sisters contribute the money they would have wagered for the quilt and then donate the quilt to a needy person. In this way, they would prevent jealousy and dissension and still accomplish their charitable purposes. (See Juvenile Instructor, 1 Oct. 1902, p. 593.)

Greed afflicts governments, too. When gambling is legalized, government officials begin to count on its revenues; yet, no matter how much money comes in, the state’s appetite usually keeps growing. And as the need for more and more “painless†tax revenue rises, or as profits from state-operated gambling diminish, the government finds itself in the position of aggressively promoting gambling, where it had earlier prohibited or simply tolerated it. Instead of protecting its citizens from being victimized by the lure of gambling, the state mounts massive advertising campaigns to encourage people to participate. Citizens who otherwise may have opposed gambling embrace it because of the government’s endorsement.

Gambling, whether it is promoted by the state or by your next-door neighbor, is just not worth the effort.

No amount of money is worth the damage to personal relationships and the loss of integrity that often follow gambling. The odds that you’ll strike it rich through gambling—especially playing the lottery—are very slim anyway. In recent U.S. lotteries, for example, odds of winning the jackpot were one in 1.9 million in Massachusetts, one in 3.5 million in New York, and one in 9 million in Ohio. (See The Charlotte Observer, 10 Mar. 1984, p. 9A; Washington Post, 13 May 1984, p. A7; USA Today, 3 Aug. 1984, p. 3A.)

Unfortunately, the majority of the losers can’t afford to lose. Newsweek (2 Sept. 1985, p. 16) describes some of the victims:

—The poor. “A Maryland study found that the poorest one-third of state households bought half of all weekly lottery tickets and 60 percent of daily-game tickets.†One churchman calls the lottery “the sale of an illusion to poor people who view it as the only possibility for breaking out of the cycle of poverty they live in.â€

—Minorities. “Seventy percent of those who buy my tickets are poor, black or Hispanic,†says the busiest lottery agent in New York.

—The elderly. A seventy-three-year-old man “spent $75 of his monthly pension check on tickets—and fought the urge to run home for the $50 he keeps for emergencies.†Another elderly man “waited five hours in line—only to collapse when he finally got to the counter, taking a rack of newspapers with him to the floor. His first words after being revived: ‘Can I have my tickets, please?’ â€

It is ironic that some of the money the states bring in through lotteries is earmarked to benefit the aged and other lottery victims! Advocates for this “tax†are silent about the inevitable increase in taxes brought about by social problems incident to gambling—such as higher welfare, law enforcement, and prison costs.

State-operated lotteries are a regressive form of taxation; that is, they take a higher percentage from poorer citizens’ incomes than from middle- and upper-class citizens’ earnings. “A tax by any other name is still a tax,†said President Gordon B. Hinckley, “except in this case the burden usually falls on the poor who can least afford to pay it. As an editorial in USA Today stated recently: ‘Lotteries aren’t painless—the overwhelming majority of players always lose. The game takes bread and money from the poor. And it is one more temptation for the compulsive gamblers who ruin careers and families with their addiction.’ (USA Today, 26 Aug. 1985.) In this context, it becomes a moral question.†(Ensign, Nov. 1985, p. 52.)

Love of neighbor as taught by the Savior leads us to have compassion for our fellowmen, to look out for their interests as we would our own. No activity that exploits others is in keeping with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“A third evil of gambling is its tendency to corrupt the participant.†(Oaks, p. 46.)

A 1984 study of prisoners in New Jersey indicated that 30 percent of male and female inmates “showed clear signs of addiction to gambling†and had experienced marital, family, employment, and financial problems related to this addiction. Over 40 percent “admitted committing illegal activities in order to gamble or pay gambling debts.†(Henry R. Lesieur, Ph.D., and Robert Klein, M.H.S., “Prisoners, Gambling and Crime,†paper presented to the 1985 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Annual Meetings, Las Vegas, Nevada, 31 March-4 April 1985.)

Signs of gambling problems are also evident in the U.S. on the high school level. A 1984 study showed that more than 86 percent of New Jersey’s high school students had gambled during the previous year; that number, which reflects Atlantic City’s legalization of casino gambling, is twenty-six percentage points higher than the 1974 figure for the entire U.S. adult population. Furthermore, 5.7 percent of New Jersey’s high school students “showed clear signs of pathological gambling. The percentage of gambling-related problems among the students is high: 11 percent said that gambling had harmed their family relationships; 15 percent had lied about gambling wins and losses; and 10 percent had committed crimes in order to pay for gambling. (Henry R. Lesieur, Ph.D., and Robert Klein, M.H.S., “Pathological Gambling among High School Students,†paper presented to the 6th National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 9-12 December 1984.)

Even small-time gambling can weaken one’s commitment to responsibility. What starts out as a fling can end up in tragedy when luck eludes an addicted gambler. A boy attempts suicide after squandering $6,000 on a slippery jackpot. A woman embezzles $38,000 and loses it all on the lottery. A high government official is tried for federal racketeering after prosecutors show he lost $2 million in casinos over three years.

Debts—and desperation—soar along with an unappeased appetite for one more shot at that lucky break. Reputations and lives suffer.

And all too often, one addiction can lead to another: alcoholism, drug abuse, dishonesty, immorality. “The gambling spirit … has proved a veritable demon of destruction to thousands,†said President Joseph F. Smith. (Improvement Era, Dec. 1908, p. 144.)

Some insist that legalized gambling would stifle illegal gambling. Others, such as James E. Ritchie, former director of the Presidential Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling, say one stimulates the other. (See this and other evaluations in Larry Braidfoot, Gambling: A Deadly Game, Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1985, pp. 85-88.)

Some say legalized gambling would debilitate organized crime. Others, such as FBI Director William H. Webster, disagree: “I pointed out at the time that Atlantic City was going into casinos that we knew of no situation in which legalized gambling was in place where we did not eventually have organized crime. … I really don’t see how one can expect to run legalized gambling anywhere without serious problems. … Gambling is still the largest source of revenue for organized crime.†(The American Legion Magazine, Jan. 1985, p. 14.)

“A fourth disadvantage … is the extraordinary waste of time involved in it. Those who while away their hours gambling frequently do so to the neglect of family and work.†(Oaks, p. 46.)

John Marcher, a character in a short novel by Henry James, lives every day of his life with the constant anticipation that something truly momentous is just about to happen to him—some terrible, extraordinary destiny is to be his. As this passion consumes him, he turns down love and other opportunities for a normal life, waiting for the inevitable. In the end, he comes to the horrifying realization that his wasted lifetime was, itself, his tragedy. (See The Beast in the Jungle, Kentfield, California: Allen Press, 1963.)

Similarly, some who are infected with a passion for gambling are sure that it’s only a matter of time until the inevitable happens. Yet, as the dimes and dollars slip through their fingers, time dissipates as well. And, like misspent money, it is irretrievable.

Those who spend their time gambling, said President Joseph F. Smith, are “wasting hours and days of precious time in [a] useless and unprofitable way. Yet those same people when approached, declare they have no time to spend as teachers in the Sabbath schools, and no time to attend either Sunday schools or meetings. Their church duties are neglected for lack of time, yet they spend hours, day after day, at cards.†(Improvement Era, Aug. 1903, 6:779.) Similar judgment could be made of those who neglect family and work responsibilities in favor of gambling.

What we become is determined, in large measure, by how we spend our time. “Tell me what amusements you like best and whether your amusements have become a ruling passion in your life and I will tell you what you are,†said President Joseph F. Smith. (Juvenile Instructor, 1 Sept. 1903, p. 529.)

“The fifth and final condemnation of gambling follows from other disadvantages already discussed. Whenever we as Latter-day Saints engage in any kind of conduct that is inconsistent with the companionship of the Spirit of the Lord, we pay an enormous price.†(Oaks, p. 46.)

Indeed, said Elder Oaks, “gambling’s most far-reaching and evil influence†may be that it “dulls the spiritual sensitivities of those who participate in it.†Without the companionship of the Lord’s Spirit, “we are vulnerable to temptation, prone to criticize, and subject to being tossed to and fro and buffeted by the forces of the world and the works of the evil one.†(Ensign, Nov. 1972, p. 46.)

One Latter-day Saint woman became so consumed by an appetite for playing cards, said Elder Robert L. Simpson, that she eventually gave up her calling in the Relief Society and her friendship with those with whom she had faithfully served. “Sisters in the ward continuing their lives of charity and compassionate service are now termed by her as narrow-minded, as hypocritical and do-gooders, but in reality, the only thing that changed was this woman.†(In Conference Report, Apr. 1969, p. 86.)

“They who gamble, who walk with chance, suffer degeneration of character,†said Elder John A. Widtsoe; “they become spiritually flabby; they end as enemies of a wholesome society. A gambling den, however beautifully housed, is the ugliest place on earth. The tense participants live in a silence broken only, over the tables, by the swish of the wings of darkness. There is an ever-present brooding spirit of horror of an unknown evil. It is the devil’s own home.†(Improvement Era, Apr. 1940, p. 225.)

The greed and selfishness associated with gambling are incompatible with the spirit of charity: “Let thy bowels … be full of charity towards all men,†said the Lord.

The sapping of spiritual sensitivity that may occur is incompatible with the spirit of virtue: “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly,†He commanded.

The blessings promised to the charitable and virtuous are infinitely greater than any premium gambling may offer: “Then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven.

“The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever.†(D&C 121:45-46.)

How to Fight It

1. We can evaluate our own activities in light of the five points raised by Elder Oaks: Do my activities encourage me to try to get something for little or no effort? Do they fill me with greed or other selfish feelings? Do they distort my sense of honesty and morality? Are they a significant waste of time? Do they cause me to lose the Spirit of the Lord?

2. We can share with our families and others the counsel of Church leaders and resolve to avoid all forms of gambling.

3. We can encourage worthwhile forms of recreation in our homes and communities.

4. We can join with other concerned citizens in efforts to stop the spread of legalized gambling and to eliminate current laws that allow or encourage it.

[Guest lt]

What do you think ammon? Is it wise to bet and wager what you truly dont have? We are told to make sure we have food storage, we are not in debt, we have savings etc...I dont know anyone on this board that doesnt have a house payment or carpayment, that is debt......

I also remember being taught as a child that the lord frons upon gambling because they gambled for his sons coat.

here's the churches view on it:

Gambling—

Morally Wrong and Politically Unwise

By Elder Dallin H. Oaks

Of the Quorum of the Twelve

From an address delivered at a Ricks College Devotional on 6 January 1987.

Dallin H. Oaks, “Gambling—Morally Wrong and Politically Unwise,†Ensign, June 1987, 69

A few months ago, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made this statement:

“There can be no question about the moral ramifications of gambling. As it has in the past, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands opposed to gambling, including government-sponsored lotteries.

“Public lotteries are advocated as a means of relieving the burden of taxation. It has been clearly demonstrated, however, that all too often lotteries only add to the problems of the financially disadvantaged by taking money from them and giving nothing of value in return. The poor and the elderly become victims of the inducements that are held out to purchase lottery tickets on the remote chance of winning a substantial prize.†1

This statement condemns gambling from two points of view. In religious terms, it is morally wrong. In public policy terms, it is politically unwise. I will discuss both of these points of view. First, gambling as a moral evil.

Gambling—Morally Wrong

Two generations ago, the English scholar and convert to Christianity, C. S. Lewis, employed an unusual literary device to explain some truths about Christianity. He authored a book consisting of letters of instruction from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior devil named Wormwood. The Screwtape Letters contains some brilliant insights into good and evil human behavior, presented more memorably than would have been possible in conventional sermons.

For example, Screwtape instructs young Wormwood how to lead his “patient†away from a Christian life very gradually by getting him accustomed to small acts or omissions.

“You will say that these are very small sins [screwtape explains]; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. [The Enemy to Screwtape is, of course, the Lord.] It does not matter how small the sins are [screwtape continues], provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.†2

There is something biblical in C. S. Lewis’s technique of using the wiles of Satan as a setting for teaching the truths of God. The Book of Job presents its teachings in this manner. I will employ this same technique in my discussion of why gambling is morally wrong. I will suggest how Satan and his tempters can use gambling to lead us away from actions and attitudes that our Father in Heaven has commanded us to follow.

Jesus taught us to give. He will even test our willingness to sacrifice all that we have in service to Him and to our fellowmen. Satan, the adversary, teaches men to take—forcibly if necessary, deviously if feasible, continuously if possible. Whatever encourages men to take from one another without giving value in return serves the cause of Satan.

Gambling is a game of chance that takes without giving value in return. Gambling puts money or other things of value into a pool and then redistributes it on the basis of a roll of the dice, a spin of the wheel, or a drawing of a number. Nothing of value is produced in the process.

What does gambling do to its participants? The attitude of taking something from someone else in order to enhance our own position—the essence of gambling—leads us away from the giving path of Christ and toward the taking path of the adversary. The act of taking or trying to take something from someone else without giving value in return is destructive of spiritual sensitivities.

Do these degrading effects apply to such seemingly innocent and trivial acts as buying a lottery ticket or giving political support to a state-sponsored lottery so that others can do so? What do you think? Remember Screwtape’s observation that “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope.†As Nephi foresaw, in the last days, “there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; … there is no harm in this.†(2 Ne. 28:8.) But according to the prophets of ancient and modern times, “the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.†(D&C 1:31; see also Lev. 5:17; Alma 45:16.)

More than sixty years ago, President Heber J. Grant and his counselors, the First Presidency of that day, declared:

“The Church has been and now is unalterably opposed to gambling in any form whatever. It is opposed to any game of chance, occupation, or so-called business, which takes money from the person who may be possessed of it without giving value received in return. It is opposed to all practices the tendency of which is to … degrade or weaken the high moral standard which the members of the Church, and our community at large, have always maintained.†3

A generation earlier, President Joseph F. Smith had stated:

“The Church does not approve of gambling but strongly condemns it as morally wrong, and classes also with this gambling, games of chance and lottery, of all kinds, and earnestly disapproves of any of its members engaging therein.†4

Many other Christian leaders have branded gambling as a moral evil because it leads its participants away from the behavior and attitudes taught by Jesus Christ. A Methodist minister, the Reverend Lycurgas M. Starkey, Jr., asked this question: “Can [a Christian] honestly use his gifts in gambling when his winnings are gained at the expense of another’s losing?†He answered his question as follows:

“The good Christian’s love of neighbor will stand against every practice which hinders the growth of the human spirit toward the likeness of Christ or which breaks down the structures of justice in society. The Christian will himself refrain from gambling and from publicly endorsing it in any form, realizing that gambling is detrimental to the purpose of life as revealed in Jesus Christ.†5

A thousand Christian and Jewish sermons testify that greed and covetousness are contrary to God’s will for his children. Gambling promotes these evils. Ten times that many sermons elaborate the Savior’s Golden Rule. Gambling, the philosophy and practice of taking, is the polar opposite of the Golden Rule.

In The Screwtape Letters the senior devil instructs his apprentice to persuade the “patient†to concentrate on his own needs and desires and to ignore the effects on others. Gambling is an ideal technique since the participant inevitably considers only his own prospects of winning. The usual news coverage reinforces that attitude. It tells only of the winners. All are encouraged to ignore the reality that the winner has been enriched at the expense of a multitude of losers. In lotteries, fewer than 1 in 1,000 wins anything. What of the effect on 999 losers?

A related technique of the adversary is to get people to focus so intently on the desirability of ends that they ignore the morality of means. Screwtape and his helpers could undercut the moral base of an entire society if they could just persuade citizens, bit by bit, to ignore or justify immoral means on the basis that the ends are good.

Like so many other sins, a state-sponsored lottery is sugar-coated with the phony sweetness of a good cause. We hear proposals to use state-sponsored gambling as a solution to financial crises in state government. These proposals invite us to focus on the desirability of additional funding and of needed relief for hard-pressed taxpayers and to ignore the costs of gambling. There are moral costs to the participants, and, as I will point out later, there are also financial costs in this means of raising money.

Gambling tends to corrupt its participants. Its philosophy of something for nothing undermines the virtues of work, industry, thrift, and service to others. The seductive lure of a huge possible windfall for a small “investment†encourages participants to gamble with funds needed for other purposes, even the basics of food and housing. Gamblers commonly deprive themselves, they often impoverish their families, and they sometimes steal from others to finance their indulgence. We are all familiar with cases in which trusted employees have stolen from their employers, bringing tragedy upon themselves and their families. All too often this ruinous sequence is traceable to a desperate attempt to pay gambling debts or to finance further indulgence.

If Screwtape were instructing young tempters in an advanced course, which went beyond temptations for an individual patient and instructed in methods that bear on large numbers of people, he would include three influences:

First, an effective way to corrupt morals on a large scale is to persuade huge numbers of persons to try some relatively harmless behavior that will prove to be addictive to some of them. Once the potential addicts can be identified, junior tempters like Wormwood can single them out for special attention, encouraging them to continue their indulgence until they are securely hooked. For reasons we do not understand, some persons lack the control mechanism that allows them to try something and then leave it alone. Some are susceptible to addictions to tobacco, others to alcohol or other drugs, and some can be addicted to gambling. For the susceptible, what looks like a harmless experiment actually chains them to an indulgence by bonds that seem too strong to break.

If losing a portion of our will pleases the adversary—and it must, since freedom to choose is God-given—then few pastimes will please him more or serve his ends more effectively than those seemingly harmless activities that prove to be addictive to some.

Second, Screwtape’s advanced course would teach that where possible the senior tempter should magnify the impact of his work by encouraging “patients†to indulge in pastimes that are both spiritually degrading and public. This is especially effective for pastimes that can be made to appear recreational, stylish, and fun. Screwtape would cite the familiar television beer commercials as a model for this method. A quiet bet between friends, or even the surreptitious purchase of a lottery ticket, is never as useful to the adversary’s cause as gambling at casinos and racetracks. Highly visible public gambling enhances the impression of recreation and assists in recruiting new participants. Participation in this kind of gambling also increases the likelihood that the tempters will be able to expose their “patients†to other degrading influences like alcohol and prostitution, which they always seem to have in close proximity to places of public gambling.

Third, if a senior devil like Screwtape sought to weaken the productive basis of an entire society, he could not do better than to try to interest its citizens in spending their productive or leisure time in gambling. Whether occupation or pastime, gambling adds no goods or services to the productive base of the society and it contributes nothing to the physical, emotional, or social well-being of its participants.

I conclude my discussion of the moral evils of gambling with these words of Richard L. Evans:

“The spirit of gambling is a progressive thing. Usually it begins modestly; and then, like many other hazardous habits, it often grows beyond control. At best it wastes time and produces nothing. At worst it becomes a ruinous obsession and fosters false living by encouraging the futile belief that we can continually get something for nothing.†6

Gambling is obviously an effective instrument for opposing the work of God. No wonder the prophets have opposed it vigorously.

[Guest lt]

Gambling—Politically Unwise

Gambling is also bad political policy. Solely in terms of its effects on society and government, a law that permits gambling is hard to justify, and a law that sponsors or promotes gambling is a sure loser.

It should not be surprising that many of the public policy arguments against gambling are mirror images of the moral and religious considerations just reviewed. The moral codes of religion are rooted in our Creator’s teachings of how his children should live to be happy, prosperous, and at peace. A religious and moral person is generally a good neighbor and a good citizen. The encouragement of moral behavior by citizens is generally good public policy.

Gambling Undercuts Productivity and Encourages Crime. The first public policy argument against gambling concerns productivity. Columnist George F. Will explained it this way:

“Gambling is debased speculation, a lust for sudden wealth that is not connected with the process of making society more productive of goods and services. Government support of gambling gives a legitimizing imprimatur to the pursuit of wealth without work.†7

In the words of Governor Bob Graham of Florida, “What the lottery says about success is the wrong message. What it says is that you don’t have to work hard, you don’t have to try to improve yourself. All you have to do is just take your roll of the dice.†8

A Catholic priest, Monsignor Joseph Dunne, deplores what the lottery teaches children: “Why should they get an education when with a little bit of luck they can win a bundle of money for life? That’s what lotteries are doing to our youth.†9

The philosophy of something for nothing or something for far less than it is worth is at the root of a multitude of crimes: theft, robbery, looting, embezzlement, fraud, and many other kinds of plunder. By nourishing and legitimating that philosophy, gambling is a threat to the prosperity and peace of any nation.

Publicly Sponsored Gambling Is Dangerous Because It Becomes Addictive to the Body Politic, Which Then Preys upon Its Citizens. Gambling is especially pernicious when it is administered by government or when government relies on it as a substantial source of public revenue. In times when a government’s appetite for taxes seems insatiable, government officials who depend on gambling to finance a share of the public budget have a strong temptation to promote gambling and to protect it from opposition.

Speaking of New York State’s recent legalization of gambling, the editor of the Saturday Review described the state’s role in these words:

“The first thing that is obvious is that New York State itself has become a predator in a way that the Mafia could never hope to match. What was intended as a plan to control gambling has become a high-powered device to promote it. The people who can least afford to take chances with their money are not only not dissuaded from gambling but are actually being cajoled into it by the state. Millions of dollars are being spent by New York State on lavish advertising on television, on radio, in buses, and on billboards. At least the Mafia was never able publicly to glorify and extol gambling with taxpayer money. And the number of poor people who were hurt by gambling under the Mafia is minuscule compared to the number who now lose money on horses with the urgent blessings of New York State.†10

As George Will observed, “Such advertising is apt to be especially effective, and cruel, among people whose tribulations make them susceptible to dreams of sudden relief.†11

Senator David Durenberger said this:

“You can’t run a successful lottery by telling the whole truth. You need hard-sell promotion, often vague and misleading about the odds and the prizes. That enterprise of parting the sucker from his dollar is questionable enough in the free marketplace; it’s no business for a state or federal government whose purpose is to serve and protect the people.†12

Gambling Is a Costly Way To Raise Revenue for Public Purposes. As a Newsweek business section writer noted: “The strongest case against lotteries may simply be that they are inefficient.†13

Most methods of state taxation cost only one to two cents to bring in each dollar of revenue. In contrast, between sixty and seventy-five cents of every dollar spent on a lottery ticket goes to operating expenses and prizes. 14 Would knowledgeable citizens tolerate a government revenue program that collected a dollar and only turned twenty-five to forty cents into the public treasury? Such an enterprise should be rejected as an unacceptably costly way to raise revenue.

Gambling Is an Unfair Way To Raise Revenue for Public Purposes. In the words of former Florida Governor Reuben Askew, the lottery is “the worst form of taxation ever invented.†15 This is because the poor pay a much higher proportion of their income than the rich. Economists describe this kind of tax as highly regressive. Writing in the National Tax Journal, one economist stated that most forms of gambling, including state lotteries and numbers games, turn out to be “two to three times more regressive than sales taxes.†16 The Salt Lake Tribune editorialized this point as follows:

“Because of their get-rich-quick appeal, lotteries are apt to attract those bettors least able to afford such wagering. State and local governments ought not be the proprietor of any practice which encourages the poor to become poorer.†17

An official with a firm that markets lottery products told a trade audience that the typical player of a numbers game is a laborer or service worker who is male, nonwhite, with less than an eighth-grade education. 18 Scholarly studies confirm that lotteries draw their revenues from the poor and disadvantaged. And the revenues are substantial. In 1985 the Washington, D.C., lottery took in an average of $176 for every man, woman, and child in that district. 19

Gambling Increases Government Expenditures. The effects of gambling impose increased government expenditures for social welfare and law enforcement. Some of these expenditures concern compulsive gambling, a disease as serious for its victims and their families as alcohol or drug addiction. The New York Times states that New York, Maryland, Connecticut, and other Eastern states are now finding it necessary to fund expensive governmental programs to rehabilitate compulsive gamblers. 20 Dr. Robert L. Custer, one of the United States’ leading authorities on gambling problems, estimates that there are at least two million compulsive gamblers in the nation today. Other estimates go as high as eight million. 21

Compulsive gambling also imposes a heavy cost in law enforcement. According to one expert, more than 80 percent of the compulsive gamblers who eventually sought help admitted that in pursuing their addiction they had committed felony crimes, usually against banks or other businesses. The American Insurance Institute has estimated that “as many as 40 percent of all ‘white-collar crimes’ have compulsive gambling as their cause.†22

The social effects of gambling have been noted throughout history. After a period in which lotteries were common in England, a Parliamentary Committee described their effects in 1808. They reported people who had lived in comfort and respectability being reduced to poverty and distress; domestic quarrels, assaults, and the ruin of family peace; fathers deserting their families, mothers neglecting their children, wives robbing their husbands of the earnings of months and years, and people pawning clothing, beds, and wedding rings in order to indulge in speculation. “In other cases,†the committee reported, “children had robbed their parents, servants their masters; suicides had been committed, and almost every crime that can be imagined had been occasioned, either directly or indirectly, through the baneful influence of lotteries.†23 England abolished lotteries a few years later.

In the United States, there was a public revulsion against lotteries, including state-sponsored lotteries, a generation later. The constitutional provisions that still forbid lotteries in some states are a product of that revulsion. Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York State summarized the United States’ experience as follows:

“The entire history of legalized gambling in this country and abroad shows that it has brought nothing but poverty, crime and corruption, demoralization of moral and ethical standards, and ultimately lower living standards and misery for all the people.†24

State Lotteries Encourage Citizens to Take Up Gambling. A state lottery encourages many non-gamblers to take up gambling. Its goal, as explained by an official of the Public Gaming Research Institute, “is to get lots of people to play a little bit.†25 That is what happens. Like a virus, official sponsorship spreads gambling like an epidemic. A Los Angeles Times survey revealed that five out of six players in the new California lottery had not played other gambling games. 26 Similarly, a six-month county-wide study conducted in 1979 by the Delaware Council on Gambling Problems showed that more than half of the “regular†lottery players (those who bet three or more times per week) had never gambled before legalized lotteries became available. 27

Advocates of legalized gambling argue that their games will eliminate illegal gambling, but there is no evidence that this has occurred. Instead, legalized gambling wins new participants, which expands the market and the potential revenues of illegal gambling. And illegal gambling and the drug traffic provide the financial underpinning of organized crime, with all of its destructive effects on the integrity and effectiveness of law enforcement personnel.

State Lotteries Provide Only a Small Percentage of Government Revenues. State lotteries do not fulfill their claims of providing significant financial relief to the states who are persuaded to adopt them. The largest proportion of state and local revenues obtained from lotteries are 2 to 3 percent in Maryland and New Jersey. 28 More typical for small states are the less than 1 percent figures received in Rhode Island and Vermont. 29

Even when local revenues are excluded from the base, there wasn’t a single state where lottery revenues amounted to as much as 6 percent of total revenues, according to 1985 figures from the National Conference of State Legislatures. 30

California’s lottery profits will be used entirely for education, but they will add only $187 to the average per pupil expenditures of $3,573, 31 an increase of only 5 percent. That kind of increase is not worth the costs associated with this morally tainted tax.

State Lotteries Benefit the Wrong Parties. The only beneficiaries of a state lottery are the businesses that sell the specialized products and services used in lotteries. Those businesses are behind the campaigns to adopt them. A study of contributions to the Florida lottery campaign showed that 84 percent came from businesses that stood to benefit from the lottery—primarily gambling suppliers and convenience stores. 32 The same pattern is emerging in Idaho, where a gambling supplier is wooing state legislators with extravagant promises of the revenues that can be obtained by means of a state lottery. 33

State-sponsored lotteries are a good news/bad news proposition. The good news is for a handful of businesses that are sure to profit by it, and for professional gamblers and the crime syndicate that will benefit from having their most profitable enterprise promoted and legitimized by the state. It is also good news for a tiny number of winners who cannot be predicted in advance but who are sure to be fewer than one in a thousand of those who participate.

The bad news is for the hundreds of thousands of losers and for the citizens at large. As a method of raising revenue to support any worthy object, a state lottery is the most unfair and expensive form of taxation, and its victims require increased state expenditures for social welfare and law enforcement. In short, the state lottery is costly, ineffective, and unfair.

“Don’t Legislate Morality†Is a Superficial Argument. Those who oppose a state-sponsored lottery are often accused of trying to legislate morality. For example, a recent letter to the editor in a Salt Lake City newspaper closed with these assertions:

“The lottery will bring money to the school system and fun and hope into the lives of the players. To those who object, I say don’t play. But don’t try to legislate my morality.†34

“Don’t legislate morality.†I suppose persons who mouth that familiar slogan think they are saying something profound. In fact, if that is an argument at all, it is so superficial that an educated person should be ashamed to use it. As should be evident to every thinking person, a high proportion of all legislation has a moral base. That is true of all of the criminal law, most of the laws regulating family relations, businesses, and commercial transactions, many of the laws governing property, and a host of others.

So what does it mean when a person says, “Don’t try to legislate morality?†There is ample room for debate on the wisdom of most legislation, whether it has a moral base or not. Some legislation is unwise or undesirable because it is an excessive interference with liberty or because it will be impossible or expensive to enforce. But the mere statement that we should not legislate morality contributes nothing to reasoned public discourse.

Legal-Moral Objections to State-sponsored Lotteries. I conclude this discussion of public policy arguments against gambling with several moral objections. Law is concerned about morality, and there are serious legal-moral objections to state lotteries. I quote five of these objections from a publication of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission:

“It is a moral issue when the state decides to derive income from an activity which is a highly regressive form of taxation that affects poor people more extensively than affluent people.

“It is a moral issue when a state decides not only to tolerate gambling but to get in the business of planning games, engaging in promotional activities … and targeting its citizens through extensive marketing analyses in the hopes of creating new gamblers. …

“It is a moral issue when a state adopts a form of gambling which in all probability will increase the extent and the amount of illegal gambling.

“It is a moral issue when a state adopts a form of gambling that will draw off large amounts of money, especially from the poor people for whom the state supposedly has a responsibility to provide assistance.

“It is a moral issue when a state engages in naive projections and adopts financial planning that amounts to putting a shoddy patch on a state’s long-term financial problems.†35

To summarize: that governments would tolerate gambling is regrettable; that governments would promote gambling is reprehensible.

So what should Latter-day Saints do about gambling? They should not participate in any way, and they should encourage others, especially their family members, not to participate.

What should Latter-day Saints do about state-sponsored lotteries, present or proposed? The First Presidency answered that question in their statement last fall:

“We urge members of the Church to join with others with similar concerns in opposing the legalization and government sponsorship of lotteries.†36

If members of our Church do not oppose immoral and pernicious practices, who will? If not now, when? We can make a difference! May God help us to do so.

The Evils of Gambling

By Dallin H. Oaks

President, Brigham Young University

Dallin H. Oaks, “The Evils of Gambling,†Ensign, Nov. 1972, 42

Montana recently adopted a new constitution that legalizes gambling. Last year the governor of Illinois signed a law legalizing bingo in the state of Illinois, when operated by charitable, religious, and fraternal organizations. New York City, through its legalized Off-Track Betting Corporation, is catering to hundreds of thousands of eager bettors—executives, cab drivers, secretaries, and housewives. Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and Connecticut have all sent representatives to study New York City’s management of what is expected to be a popular and profitable source of local revenue. Last year, after decades of opposition on moral grounds, the Massachusetts legislature gave in to economic pressure by establishing a state lottery, thus making the once-puritanical Bay State the fifth state to enter the lottery business.

Government interest in gambling is spurred by the need to obtain additional sources of tax revenue to finance the increasingly expensive and widespread activities of state and local governments. Individual interest is doubtless stimulated by the additional free time and cash in the hands of our increasingly affluent society. But gambling’s basic attraction for the individual has always been the lure of “getting something for nothing.â€

In its simplest form gambling is the act of risking something of value on the outcome of a game or event that may be determined in part or entirely by chance. The attitude of the Church toward gambling is clearly set forth in the following statement by President Heber J. Grant and his counselors in the First Presidency on September 21, 1925:

“The Church has been and now is unalterably opposed to gambling in any form whatever. It is opposed to any game of chance, occupation, or so-called business, which takes money from the person who may be possessed of it without giving value received in return. It is opposed to all practices the tendency of which is to encourage the spirit of reckless speculation, and particularly to that which tends to degrade or weaken the high moral standard which members of the Church, and our community at large, have always maintained.

“We therefore advise and urge all members of the Church to refrain from participation in any activity which is contrary to the view herein set forth.†1

Subsequent statements by leaders of the Church have elaborated on the reasons for this strong position.

Gambling is an old evil, long recognized as such. Some Oriental gambling games have been traced back to 2100 B.C. In ancient Egypt persons convicted of gambling were sent to the quarries. Gambling is denounced in the Hindu code, the Koran, and the Talmudic law. Aristotle denounced gamblers.

Gambling was widespread in the Middle Ages, especially among the nobility. But even those who practiced games of chance were willing to recognize evil in the games, at least for others. Legislation in England and France attempted to counteract the detrimental effects of gambling on servants, because it induced them to idleness or caused them to neglect archery practice, thus endangering national security.

One of the most popular forms of gambling was the lottery, which was permitted among working-class people and was common in the English-speaking world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Queen Elizabeth proclaimed the first state lottery in England in 1576. In 1660 a lottery was even held to ransom Englishmen held in slavery in Tunis, Algiers, and on Turkish galleys. Lotteries were so widespread in the United States in the early 1800s that there were almost two hundred lottery offices in the state of New York alone. In 1832 the gross sale of lottery tickets was over $60 million, which was five times the total national budget of the U.S. government.

It has been suggested that lotteries were a popular way to finance large projects because there were few reliable banks during this period. Therefore, no regular means were available for obtaining huge sums of money except by aggregating a large number of small amounts from citizens of limited means.

Whatever the merit of that suggestion, in the first half of the 1800s there was a public revulsion against the lottery. By 1850 many state constitutions had provisions forbidding lotteries and other forms of gambling. In many states these same constitutional provisions stand as barriers to legal gambling today, and they are under attack.

Opposition to lotteries first came in England in 1773, when the city of London petitioned the House of Commons to abolish lotteries because they were hurting the commerce of the kingdom and threatening the welfare and prosperity of the people. In 1808 the Commons appointed a select committee to inquire into the evils attending lotteries. The committee report, which helped to abolish lotteries in England a few years later, is so current that it could have been written last week instead of over 160 years ago.

The committee reported cases in which people living in comfort and respectability had been reduced to poverty and distress; cases of domestic quarrels, assaults, and the ruin of family peace; and cases of fathers deserting their families, mothers neglecting their children, wives robbing their husbands of the earnings of months and years, and people pawning clothes, beds, and wedding rings, in order to indulge in the speculation.

“In other cases,†the committee reported, “children had robbed their parents, servants their masters; suicides had been committed, and almost every crime that can be imagined had been occasioned, either directly or indirectly, through the baneful influence of lotteries. …†2

In its final report the committee concluded that the foundation of the lottery system was so radically vicious that no method of regulation could be devised that would permit Parliament to adopt it as an efficacious source of revenue and at the same time divest it of all its attendant evils.

At a time when state lotteries are being touted as an attractive way to raise badly needed public funds, it is well to recall that a lottery is the most regressive of all revenue measures. Even more than the unpopular sales tax, its burdens fall most heavily on the poor, who are the principal patrons of this type of gambling.

There can be no doubt that gambling is big business in the United States. Expert estimates of the annual amount of illegal gambling vary from $7 billion to $50 billion a year, with $20 billion being the most popular estimate. That figure amounts to approximately $100 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. The estimated total annual profits amount to about $6 to $7 billion a year. This figure is 50 percent more than the combined 1970 profits of American Telephone and Telegraph, General Motors, IBM, and Standard Oil of New Jersey.

In 1962 United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy called attention to the overwhelming cost of gambling:

“… the American people are spending more on gambling than on medical care or education; … in so doing, they are putting up the money for the corruption of public officials and the vicious activities of the dope peddlers, loan sharks, bootleggers, white slave traders, and slick confidence men. Investigation this past year by the FBI, Internal Revenue Service, the Narcotics Bureau, the Post Office Department, and all other federal investigative units has disclosed without any shadow of a doubt that corruption and racketeering, financed largely by gambling, are weakening the vitality and strength of this nation.†3

Today there are many proposals to legalize gambling. Some urge this as a way to obtain new tax revenues, citing the examples of Spain, Norway, Sweden, France, Australia, and twenty other governments whose national lotteries provide significant revenues to state treasuries. Others propose to legalize gambling because they contend that this would weaken organized crime by drying up one of its principal sources of financial support. It is also urged that legalized gambling would reduce the amount of graft and illegal payoffs to public officials.

Still others want to legalize gambling because they feel that it is impossible to enforce laws against it. According to this line of argument, the only effect of laws against gambling is to raise the price of gambling and therefore increase the profits of those of the criminal element who conduct the illegal enterprise.

Closely examined, none of these arguments for legalized gambling is persuasive. When the late Thomas E. Dewey was governor of New York, he answered these arguments, declaring:

“The entire history of legalized gambling in this country and abroad shows that it has brought nothing but poverty, crime and corruption, demoralization of moral standards, and ultimately lower living standards and misery for all the people.†4

The late J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is quoted as saying: “If you think legalizing games of chance starves out the criminals, look at Las Vegas, where the games are legal, yet the hoods still deal themselves in and related vices flourish.â€

In urging the state of Alaska not to legalize gambling as an economic panacea, Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin gave these additional financial reasons: The idea that gambling would increase revenues is an illusion. Every dollar raised from gambling would mean five dollars spent in “higher police costs, higher court costs, higher penitentiary costs, and higher relief costs.†5

In addition to all of these reasons, gambling should not be legalized because it is immoral. The law is, of course, too imperfect an instrument to condemn all immoral conduct. Although to hate is immoral, the law cannot efficiently condemn that sin. But gambling is different. Its evils can fairly be measured in the lives of those who are affected by it.

Few would urge that the law promote gambling; yet to legalize gambling would have just that result. The law has an important standard-setting function. A law legalizing gambling would, in the eyes of many, be understood as a formal declaration that this kind of conduct is moral, proper, and expected. Persons now deterred from participating in gambling because they believe it to be illegal and immoral would be encouraged to participate.

Gambling is especially pernicious when it is administered by government or when government relies on it for a substantial source of tax revenues. In times when our government’s appetite for taxes seems insatiable, government officials who depend on gambling for a share of the public budget would have a strong temptation to promote gambling and to protect it from opposition.

Those who doubt the force of this argument should consider the history of efforts to impose more stringent government controls on that deadly product—tobacco. These efforts are commonly and forcefully resisted on the grounds that the vitally needed health measures would reduce essential tax revenues, disrupt the economics of certain states, and cause much unemployment.

Let us not allow gambling to obtain the same hold on our government and lawful businesses. Government should work to refine the moral sensitivities of its citizens, not pander to their weaknesses.

There are at least five reasons why our Church leaders have urged us to avoid gambling and to fight this evil practice in our communities.

First, gambling weakens the ethics of work, industry, thrift, and service—the foundation of national prosperity—by holding out the seductive lure of something for nothing. By the same token, gambling encourages idleness, with all of its resulting bad effects for society.

President Joseph F. Smith, sixth president of the Church, gave this emphasis to the importance of the ethic of work in the gospel of Jesus Christ:

“We do not feel that it is possible for men to be really good and faithful Christian people unless they can also be good, faithful, honest and industrious people. Therefore, we preach the gospel of economy, the gospel of sobriety. We preach that the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer, and that the idler is not entitled to an inheritance in Zion.†6

President Stephen L Richards of the First Presidency (1879-1959) said that gambling “proceeds upon the assumption that one has to lose for another to gain.†He then declared that the element of chance in gambling leads those who indulge in it to believe that chance is the controlling and dominant influence in life. “And so obsessed do some people become with it that they cannot contemplate or think of any other way in which to increase their means and their income except by taking the chance that gambling affords.†7

A second evil of gambling is that it promotes greed and covetousness and inevitably involves and encourages the base practice of overreaching and taking from one’s neighbor. A Methodist minister, Lycurgus M. Starkey, Jr., of the St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, concluded an attack on gambling with words that every Latter-day Saint should recognize as familiar doctrine:

“The good Christian’s love of neighbor will stand against every practice which hinders the growth of the human spirit toward the likeness of Christ or which breaks down the structures of justice in society. The Christian will himself refrain from gambling and from publicly endorsing it in any form, realizing that gambling is detrimental to the purpose of life as revealed in Jesus Christ.†8

A third evil of gambling is its tendency to corrupt the participant. We are all familiar with cases in which trusted employees have ruined their lives and brought disgrace and tragedy upon themselves and their families by stealing their employer’s money. All too often the sordid story is traceable to a desperate attempt to pay gambling debts or to finance further gambling activities.

The temptations of the gambler are such that persons in responsible positions in government and private industry will not hire or retain as employees those who are known to gamble. In recounting the undesirable side effects of gambling, mention must also be made of the fact that gambling is often accompanied by indulgence in alcohol and other vices.

A fourth disadvantage, one cited by persons not concerned with the moral effects of gambling, is the extraordinary waste of time involved in it. Those who while away their hours gambling frequently do so to the neglect of family and work.

Time wasted in gambling becomes more significant when we reflect that many persons who indulge in gambling become addicted to it. The late Elder Richard L. Evans of the Council of the Twelve (1906-1971) made this statement:

“The spirit of gambling is a progressive thing. Usually it begins modestly; and then, like many other hazardous habits, it often grows beyond control. At best it wastes time and produces nothing. At worst it becomes a ruinous obsession and fosters false living by encouraging the futile belief that we can continually get something for nothing.†9

The fifth and final condemnation of gambling follows from other disadvantages already discussed. Whenever we as Latter-day Saints engage in any kind of conduct that is inconsistent with the companionship of the Spirit of the Lord, we pay an enormous price. Left without the sustaining influence of that Spirit, we are vulnerable to temptation, prone to criticize, and subject to being tossed to and fro and buffeted by the forces of the world and the works of the evil one.

There can be no question that gambling dulls the spiritual sensitivities of those who participate in it. In that terrible effect we may identify gambling’s most far-reaching and evil influence. Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Council of the Twelve (1872-1952) gave vivid expression to this thought:

“They who gamble, who walk with chance, suffer degeneration of character; they become spiritually flabby; they end as enemies of a wholesome society. A gambling den, however beautifully housed, is the ugliest place on earth. The tense participants live in a silence broken only, over the tables, by the swish of the wings of darkness. There is an ever-present brooding spirit of horror of an unknown evil. It is the devil’s own home.†10

What I have said about gambling should be understood to include playing cards for money, betting on horses and athletic contests (including office pools on the world series), casino gambling in all its forms, lotteries, raffles, bingo for money, and dice.

I further suggest that the same spirit of gambling, the same reckless wagering on the chance turn of events, characterizes some forms of investments. The same evils that attend a throw of the dice for money can attend the person who casually puts his money on a highly speculative stock or commodity investment. I know of no better test in this area than that suggested by President Joseph F. Smith, who remarked:

“The element of chance enters very largely into everything we undertake, and it should be remembered that the spirit in which we do things decides very largely whether we are gambling or are entering into legitimate business enterprises.†11

One type of gambling that has been vigorously criticized by our leaders is card playing. Cards may, of course, be played without playing for money, but the relationship between card playing and gambling is so close and the practice of card playing itself partakes of so many of the disadvantages of gambling that card playing has come under condemnation regardless of whether or not gambling is involved.

Elder Widtsoe criticized card playing on the grounds that it was habit forming and a waste of time. He declared:

“It has been observed through centuries of experience that the habit of card playing becomes fixed upon a person and increases until he feels that a day without a game of cards is incomplete.

“After an afternoon or evening at card-playing, nothing has been changed, no new knowledge, thoughts, or visions have come, no new hopes or aspirations have been generated, except for another opportunity to waste precious hours. It leads nowhere; it is a dead-end road. … Dull and deadly is a life which does not seek to immerse itself in the rapidly moving stream of new and increasing knowledge and power. Time is required to ‘keep up with the times.’ We dare not waste time on pastimes that starve the soul.†12

Today, with increasingly common and persuasive proposals to legalize gambling, we need a broader resolve. All of us should use our influence as citizens to combat all attempts to use the evils of gambling as a means of accomplishing some supposed social good. We should also heed the counsel of our Church leaders, who are “unalterably opposed to gambling in any form whatever†and who ever counsel us to keep ourselves clean and unspotted from the sins of the world.

[Faerie]

Ah yes, yet another thread that could have been spared w/ a simple search on lds.org

[Snow]

Originally posted by Ammon@Apr 19 2004, 06:40 PM

Indeed, I love the craps table and the slots. Is that wrong? NO GAMBLING... commandment or "just good advice?"

Ammon,

You make this just too very easy. According to you, doctrine is anything taught by the Brethren in official Church publications. Go to lds.org, check it out.

Here's an except from Elder Oakes:

"

“The Church has been and now is unalterably opposed to gambling in any form whatever. It is opposed to any game of chance, occupation, or so-called business, which takes money from the person who may be possessed of it without giving value received in return. It is opposed to all practices the tendency of which is to encourage the spirit of reckless speculation, and particularly to that which tends to degrade or weaken the high moral standard which members of the Church, and our community at large, have always maintained.

“We therefore advise and urge all members of the Church to refrain from participation in any activity which is contrary to the view herein set forth.†1

Subsequent statements by leaders of the Church have elaborated on the reasons for this strong position.

Gambling is an old evil, long recognized as such...."

Read up my boy. If you are gambling, you are doing not just wrong, but evil and you are immoral.

It's doctrinal right?

[Guest lt]

sorry sometime I get tired of repeating the same thing over....I should have clipped and pasted only one, but the point got through....

[serapha]

Indeed, I love the craps table and the slots.  Is that wrong?  NO GAMBLING... commandment or "just good advice?"

Ammon,

Simply put, it is poor stewardship of your time and money. :)

~serapha~

[DisRuptive1]

Actually it is only a waste of your money and time when you don't understand the game you're playing. It takes a lot of effort in order to count cards at blackjack. You must constantly keep a few variable numbers moving in your head, for one example. How is that considered being idle?

[Outshined]

Though I may have mentioned this already, it bears repeating.

I recently did some work for my company at Harrah's casino in Cherokee, North Carolina. The mangaer told me they average an intake of 40 million dollars a day there. Their record for a 24-hour period is just over 100 million. I was staggered. A lady came out and asked for the telephones, the manager told her to go in and to the back of the casino. She replied, "I'm not going back in there, I just lost fifteen thousand dollars!"

Most of the customers I saw were elderly, and the bathrooms have disposal containers for insulin syringes. Sad.

Casinos are not built on winners, you know, and there is a reason that they can afford to install a 120,000 dollar automatic door.

[Guest Ammon]

[AFDaw]

Spencer has a step-sister that is the avid gambler. Tons of comps all over Nevada! When we went out there a few years ago she was going to Laughlin (sp) and asked if we wanted to come. We jumped at the opportunity since we were traveling with family and this was a chance to get away. So everything was free and we were in the casino and we each had $20 and said once that $20 is gone, we're through. We ended up actually doubling our money, but I could SO easily see how someone could get addicted to it. I personally don't think anything was wrong with us sticking a few quarters in some machines to see if we won anything, but that was the extent of our gambling. And we've not done anything since. Now his sister...it wasn't uncommon to see her in the casino and her say "I'm down 1000" or "I'm up 4000" That's a little extreme for me.

[Guest Ammon]

What is the difference between gambling and video games. Both are games. Both provide enterainment to the players. Both end up in the owner of the game getting your money, but in gambling, sometimes you get to keep your money or make some. So which is worse?

[AFDaw]

Nobody ever wrecked their marriage and lost their job and house because they couldn't save the Princess in Mario Brothers.

[Luzia]

Originally posted by AFDaw@Apr 20 2004, 01:36 PM

Nobody ever wrecked their marriage and lost their job and house because they couldn't save the Princess in Mario Brothers.

Well, someone ruined his marriage for being online too much and playing online games. They are divorced now.

*shrugs*

I think everything is okay, with limits.

[Guest TheProudDuck]

I used to stop at the Peppermill in Mesquite on the way from SoCal to BYU, take $50 inside, leave my wallet in my car, and play until I tripled the money or lost it all. Playing $2 blackjack tables, I only lost the $50 twice. I only broke my rule of stopping while $100 ahead when I got lucky and got to $100 in about ten minutes, so I played awhile longer and won $50 more. Then I got pulled over by one of Cedar City's finest and got a $50 ticket, so it balanced out.

I never thought of my Peppermill visits as substantially different from spending $50 playing golf. (Not that you can find many $50 courses outside of Utah anymore!) It was recreation; I certainly wasn't trying to get rich quick, and couldn't have, with my self-imposed limits.

I think one of the more potentially spiritually harmful aspects of modern gambling is that even if you have good self-control and a system for limiting yourself, gambling is generally done in the company of many hard people, which makes it hard for the Spirit to be present. Then again, that describes my workplace pretty well (hopefully not for long -- had one good interview yesterday and another tomorrow), so there you go.

[Snow]

Originally posted by Ammon@Apr 20 2004, 11:47 AM

What is the difference between gambling and video games.

Well,

According to you and your doctrinal stance, video games are just video games and gambling is immoral and evil.

[Guest Ammon]

Originally posted by Snow+Apr 20 2004, 03:40 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Snow @ Apr 20 2004, 03:40 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Ammon@Apr 20 2004, 11:47 AM

What is the difference between gambling and video games.

Well,

According to you and your doctrinal stance, video games are just video games and gambling is immoral and evil.

Good point.

[Snow]

Originally posted by Ammon+Apr 20 2004, 04:22 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Ammon @ Apr 20 2004, 04:22 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Originally posted by -Snow@Apr 20 2004, 03:40 PM

<!--QuoteBegin--Ammon@Apr 20 2004, 11:47 AM

What is the difference between gambling and video games.

Well,

According to you and your doctrinal stance, video games are just video games and gambling is immoral and evil.

Good point.

I myself am not completely clear on what the problem is with extra-marital sex provided care is taken to protect from disease and damage to the family. My lack of understanding, however, does not prevent me from being obedient and hence chaste.

[Outshined]

Originally posted by Snow@Apr 20 2004, 05:24 PM

I myself am not completely clear on what the problem is with extra-marital sex provided care is taken to protect from disease and damage to the family. My lack of understanding, however, does not prevent me from being obedient and hence chaste.

*(Faints)*

[Guest Ammon]

Originally posted by Snow@Apr 20 2004, 04:24 PM

I myself am not completely clear on what the problem is with extra-marital sex provided care is taken to protect from disease and damage to the family. My lack of understanding, however, does not prevent me from being obedient and hence chaste.

You have difficulting working and playing well with others. Don't you?

[Guest lt]

I try not to do either, and when my spouse is home I'm not here lol lol

[Marsha]

It is my understanding that there are some LDS members that OWN casino's in Vegas. Wonder if they tithe on that increase?

[Guest lt]

I was told they dont own casinos but the property in which they are on.

but it does make you wonder hu?

[serapha]

Originally posted by Snow@Apr 20 2004, 05:24 PM

I myself am not completely clear on what the problem is with extra-marital sex provided care is taken to protect from disease and damage to the family. My lack of understanding, however, does not prevent me from being obedient and hence chaste.

*(Faints)*

~thanks~

One of the most entertaining postings I have seen on this forum.

~serapha~