What Is Gambling?

Gambling is taking a risk, usually with money, in the hope of gaining something more but often losing what one had instead. If we gamble our lives on man made philosophies and worldviews, rather than the truth of the Bible and the need for a Savior, then we risk our physical and spiritual well-being in this lifetime and we completely lose out on eternal life. Betting on (following after) knowledge, magic, money, power, fame, beauty, entertainment, and many other such things may bring some form of pleasure in this world, but it cannot bring peace to the soul nor a loving relationship with the Eternal.

Let us begin by actually defining wager, gamble, and bet. Before I was involved in the realm of the casino, I used these three words more or less interchangeably. But each has its own meaning and keeping these distinct will help clarify some issues that come up later.

The term 'wager' is the broadest category. It includes both gambling and betting. It means to put your money (or something of value) up for potential loss in an effort to win money (or something of value).

The term 'gamble' is to wager on a random event such as rolling dice or flipping a quarter. Random events tend to average out in the long term – such as a 50/50 chance on heads or tails for the quarter or a ??% chance of any given number on a die.

The term 'bet' refers to a wager on something that involves skill. This is often applied to sports betting such as a football game, swimming competition, horse racing, or who can chop firewood the fastest. The main point being that it involves skill and is not a random event.

Take an example of flipping a quarter to see if it lands with heads or tails visible. We can state so much about the odds of different outcomes. The long term average is a 50/50 chance of either side. We know there is an average 1 in 32 chance of flipping it and having heads land five times in a row. We can diagram a standard bell shaped curve to show the likelihood of both short and extremely long streaks or patterns. Yet, if at this moment I pick up a quarter and flip it, we cannot say it if will land heads or tails.

What Is Professional Gambling?

When gambling is mentioned, many people think about a glamorous scene in fictional book or movie featuring a high stakes bet ... or they think of the gambling addict who wastes their life and money pursuing an ever elusive jackpot. The reality is that most professional gamblers make their money through sponsoring products and events.

Knowledgeable gambling is working the randomness contained in games of chance along with a limited amount of intelligent choice. If you do not know what you are doing, you lose money quickly. If you know what your are doing, you lose money slowly. If you are an expert, and you put in the time, you can keep even or sometimes slowly win. The process is time consuming, highly repetitious, and often boring. Those who truly make money at this type of activity, usually do so by playing other people rather than playing against a casino.

The risk is genuine. One must follow the statistical rules built on an understanding of chance just to break even. One must also understand how the casino manipulates odds (makes the house edge) to have a hope of not losing everything against it.

Why Do People Lose in a Casino?

One of the most basic things to recognize is that the casino is not just gambling, it is gambling with a very negative twist. The casino sets the rules ... terrible rules to play under.

The simplest answer is that the casino knows the odds for each and every bet in the casino. It then makes an edge by making the player go first, setting the payback to be less than what was spent, or otherwise manipulating the statistics and play. The casino can make a fortune just with this ... no cheating is required.

Some of the articles in this series looks at the spiritual side of gambling and addiction. But nothing spiritual is needed to appeal to the lusts of the flesh. The attraction to make quick easy money in a lazy way will pull many people in to their financial destruction.

Wagering on Philosophies and Worldviews

In reality, we are wagering, betting, and gambling with both our lives and with our eternal life. We are gambling with both our physical and spiritual being. When we make choices that have any religious significance, do we even know what we are betting on? Do we recognize the impact such a decision will have both short term and long term?

So much that is spiritual gets taught so deceptively. We are fed spiritual things in movies, in cartoons, in children's shows, in adult shows. It may be called 'the force", it may be called magic, or they may simply include rituals that were designed to call demons without telling you that it has any significance at all. We grow up confused about spiritual things because we are not formally taught to recognize and discern what is biblical and what is anti-biblical. And since most believers have never read the entire bible, they are open to such deception.

How Does Losing in a Casino Compare to Life in a Fallen World?

• The casino causes people to lose and is a terrible place to be ... Sin also causes people to lose and is a terrible place to live
• The house edge is absolute, unbeatable, and will eventually drag you down to nothing [without an advantage] ... eternal judgment is also absolute, unbeatable, and will bring you to nothing [without The Advantage].
• In the casino you can play until you lose all your money ... in reality you can play until you lose your life
• In the casino, your betting strategy is your way of dealing with randomness ... in life, your worldview, philosophy, or religion is how you deal with the unseen spiritual forces ... in either, some strategies will do better than others for awhile, but in the end all strategies [except one] lose.
• The games of the casino appeal to competition and the lusts of the flesh ... so too the world's games of business, government, and war appeal to selfishness, competition, power, knowledge, and control ... the larger categories of the lusts of the flesh.

The Need for a Savior

In the physical, life is just a continual loss until death. You cannot 'win' at life and your time until the grave (game over) is limited. Like bad betting strategies, there are so many ways to play life badly and bring death sooner [including drugs, poor health, and risky behavior].

In the spiritual, there is one strategy, The Savior, that will stop eternal death [going bankrupt]. By humbling yourself, admitting your sins, and accepting the substitutionary sacrifice made by The Messiah, forgiveness of all your sins [your debts] occurs and new life is granted in the Kingdom of Heaven.