Is Online Gambling Banned In America
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*Is Online Gambling Illegal In Us
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America Usa
*Is Online Gambling Illegal In America
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America 2020
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America 2019
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America Right Now
Every type of gambling is practiced in the USA, however, the rules and regulation vary from state to state. Online gambling is widely enjoyed in America and makeup to the 70% of the gamblers. From sports betting to online casinos, pretty much everything is legal in the states. Compared to the offline market, the online gambling market is quite big. The most widely practiced ways of Internet gambling in America is playing the online casino games.
*Now says the U.S. Wire Act bars all internet gambling that involves interstate transactions, reversing its position from 2011 that only sports betting was prohibited under the law passed.
*First off, disclaimer. I do not monitor legal developments regularly on this topic. Subject to that, my understanding is that yes, online gambling is banned in most states outside of Nevada and some other states that have legalized gambling.
Status of Online Gambling in the USA The government does not prohibit any kind of online gambling activity. However, there may be some websites that are not easily accessible to the people of America. But people seem to enjoy gambling everywhere in the country without fearing much about the laws.
Sports BettingIt is legal to bet on the sports online in many parts of America. In the 1990s, a rule was passed that stated that if the Government does not impose new hard and fast rules for sports betting, the states will be free to regulate it themselves. While some of the states legalized it, a few others prohibited sports betting.
Later, with the inception of the “online world”, most of the states legalized sports betting. The rest of the states remain quiet but native people enjoy online betting in sports anyways. The sports betting industry in the Americas might not be as big as in Europe but they enjoy good success. To match the standards of the cool European casinos like bästa svenska casino, American casinos still need to develop.
Online Casinos A gambler’s favorite place is a casino. Lucky for the people of America, there are several wonderful, actively running licensed online casinos in the country. Though the unlicensed casinos are not legal, people actively play games like poker and slots for high stakes anyway.
Online Gambling Laws in The United States Gambling laws can be a rather complex topic these days as there are several US federal gambling laws to account for such as the UIGEA, and the Federal Wire Act, as well as, several individual state gambling laws.
The rule passed in 2006 banned online casinos and it was remarked as illegal to place any type of bets on websites. According to the rule, the websites were asked to not accept any kinds of bet from the players. A few years after the rule was imposed, some of the websites got a license from the government. These casinos provided the players with the best casino action in a legally licensed environment.
At present, most of the states have legalized online casinos. Poker and slots are by far the most demanded games in the casinos. Many live poker tables and live tournaments are provided to the customers from the biggest casinos worldwide on the casino websites.
Status of Legality Still, some of the states in the USA do not license the online website for gamblers. They usually block the money transfer options and therefore the players are not able to place a wager. The rules are not too strict and people enjoy and practice gambling at unlicensed online gambling places.
To avoid any legal issues, some of the online gambling websites have partnered with the licensed third-party. This enables all the features for the gamblers and it makes gambling totally legal. The number of online gambling stores is increasing rapidly as people are opting for online casinos more than the land-based ones.
|Photo by Fancycrave.com from Pexels
Article ID: DE209 | By: Rex M. Rogers
Summary
If baseball once was America’s national pastime, it’s been replaced by a $550 billion-per-year obsession — gambling. Gambling feeds the self-indulgent, instant-gratification mindset that has plagued America in recent decades. Beneath its glittery surface lurk the parallel tragedies of increasing addiction and a decreasing devotion to spirituality. Most Christian churches have been silent about gambling. Scripture is not. Even without a direct commandment, “Thou shalt not gamble,” the Bible offers numerous principles that militate against the practice. Informed Christians will challenge such social evils as state-sponsored gambling and the use of gambling for fundraising. Gambling is a bankrupt abandonment of reason and religion, and in the long run everyone loses.
Mark Twain shrewdly observed that “the best throw at dice is to throw them away.”1 Americans no longer agree. Gambling is the newest Great American Pastime.
State lotteries began in 1964 with New Hampshire, and now bring in $30 billion per year in 37 states and the District of Columbia.2 Some 55 million Americans play lotteries once per month, spending $88 million per day — more than they spend per day on groceries.3
What began as a trickle with state lotteries became a flash flood in 1988 when Native American tribes began taking advantage of the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which permitted them to operate casinos on tribal lands. Nearly 300 Indian-run casinos now exist in 28 states with 186 of the 557 federally recognized tribes participating. About 30 casinos are opening per year,4 and additional tribes are vying for a stake in what some have called “the new buffalo.”5
Gambling expenditures now top $550 billion per year.6 That’s more money than Americans spend per year on films, books, amusements, and music entertainment combined. It’s about $1.5 billion per day or an increase of roughly 3,000 percent in the past 20 years.7
With the exception of horse and dog racing, gambling is increasing in every form. Riverboat, dockside, and other off-shore gambling enterprises, including cruise ships, are being proposed in several states as “limited” gambling.
Off-track, parimutuel, jai alai, keno, and video betting are also increasing. So are raffles and bingo. Business Week observed that gambling outlets are becoming “almost ubiquitous” as “mob-affiliated bookies and numbers runners are being supplanted by state governments, charitable and religious groups, and blue-chip entertainment-leisure conglomerates that say they’re in the ‘gaming’ business.”8
THE VICE OF CHOICE
Some 95 percent of American citizens have gambled at some time in their lives. About 82 percent have played the lottery, 75 percent have played slot machines, 50 percent have bet on horse or dog races, 44 percent have gambled with cards, and 34 percent gamble via bingo. Approximately 26 percent have bet on sports events. About 74 percent of the American adult population have gambled in casinos. Polls indicate that at least 89 percent of the American population approves of casino gambling.9
The acceptance of gambling into everyday life is a historic shift in cultural philosophy. University of Nevada, Las Vegas, professor William N. Thompson observed that “the era of expanded legalized gambling has coincided with a trend toward increased permissiveness in society. There certainly is a connection between attitudes about lifestyle, sex, pornography — even abortion and occasional drug use — and attitudes toward gambling. The notion that government has no business in our bedrooms relates to the notion that government has no business telling us how to spend our leisure time and our own money as long as we are doing so without coercion or harm to others.”10
The ethic of self-denial, saving, and capital accumulation is being replaced with a hedonistic consumerism, what Christopher Lasch called the “culture of narcissism.”11 Deferred gratification is shelved in favor of instant demand. Americans want more, and they want it now.
Many Americans no longer work for future earthly or spiritual rewards. They only consume and receive less and less satisfaction from it.12
The philosophy of gambling undercuts one’s ability and desire to defer gratification in order to accomplish a goal. Individual enterprise, thrift, effort, and self-denial are set aside for chance gain, immediate satisfaction, and self-indulgence. In this sense, gambling exemplifies a reversal of American values.13
THIRD TIME’S A CHARM?
Whittier Law School gambling expert I. Nelson Rose believes a third wave of legalized gambling is washing over the United States.14 The first wave began in colonial America when lottery management companies took their place among the largest early-nineteenth-century businesses.15 A healthy economy together with lottery corruption contributed to the decline of legal lotteries by the 1820s.
The second wave of legal gambling began when Southern states looked for revenue after the Civil War. Gambling was a major diversion in late-nineteenth-century Western gold and silver mining camps. Legalized gambling’s second wave of popularity began losing strength in the 1880s with the Louisiana State Lottery scandal (in which local lottery fundraisers evolved into mail fraud and criminal interstate commerce involving corrupt government officials, intrigue, and murder). By 1894, state lotteries were condemned by law, and 36 states adopted antilottery text in their state constitutions.16
While gambling has been legal in (and largely limited to) Nevada since 1931, the third wave of legalized gambling in the United States began in 1964 with the inception of the New Hampshire State Lottery. By 1984, a majority of states had legalized lotteries.17
Bingo was legalized in 1937 in Rhode Island. Some 46 states, the District of Columbia, and all the Canadian provinces now have legalized bingo.18
Horse race betting is legal in 42 states and all Canadian provinces, dog race betting in 19 states, and jai alai games in four states. All 10 Canadian provinces and 48 American states now permit some form of legal gambling. By the year 2000, some experts have predicted that 40 percent of U.S. households will be participating in legalized commerical gambling.19
Legalized commercial gambling is now growing at breakneck speed, spurred by cash–hungry governments, gambling industry promotion of “gaming” as entertainment, and the appeal of new, high-tech video gambling. Some antigambling counselors believe that “decades of church–sponsored gambling [have] also tended to lend approval to games of chance.”20
Only two states still maintain a no-legal-gambling policy: Hawaii and Utah. Hawaii debates the matter periodically. While 60 percent of Hawaiians polled favor a lottery, enough citizens are concerned about damaging the state’s image as an island paradise that lotteries and other commercial gambling are consistently rejected.21
Eugene Martin Christiansen, a gambling industry consultant, believes America’s new love affair with gambling “is part of a fundamental change that is irreversible at this point because the country is changing with fewer people going to church, more older people with time and money on their hands, and especially, with state lottery advertising campaigns that make it seem that buying lottery tickets is almost a patriotic duty.”22
LOSING THE BET
Gambling is a spiritual and financial timebomb in a pretty package, and no demographic group is immune to the social pathologies associated with it.23 Compulsive gambling is increasing rapidly in all population groups, even among teens.
The fastest growing “addiction” among high school and college-age young people is problem gambling, with as much as seven percent or 1.3 million teens considered addicted. Dr. Durand Jacobs, a pioneer in the treatment of problem gambling, believes the rate among teens is at least 10 percent, about twice the rate among adults.24
Howard Schaffer, director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Addiction Studies, predicted, “We will face in the next decade or so more problems with youth gambling than we’ll face with drug use.”25 The National Institute of Mental Health notes that “addiction” to gambling is growing fastest among teenagers.26 Suicide rates are twice as high among teenagers with gambling problems,27 and teenagers are nearly two-and-one-half times as likely as adults to become compulsive gamblers.28Is Online Gambling Illegal In Us
Durand Jacobs noted that “public understanding of gambling is where our understanding of alcoholism was some 40 or 50 years ago. Unless we wake up soon to gambling’s darker side, we’re going to have a whole new generation lost to this addiction.”29
From lotteries in the 1960s to casinos in the 1990s, the gambling industry has grown more rapidly and more explosively than any business in American history. Legalized commercial gambling is now one of the largest industries in the U.S. leisure economy.30
IT’S NOT IN THE CARDS
While the tidal wave of legalized commercial gambling has engulfed the country, the Christian community has greeted this development with a deafening silence. A few local battles have taken place, and during the past two years, Christian leaders such as Gary Bauer, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, and Ralph Reed have begun to speak out, but so far gambling has garnered very little national attention.
Several reasons may explain why Christians have been rather slow to respond to the spread of legalized commercial gambling:
1.) The conservative Christian “agenda” is packed, focusing on issues like abortion, pornography, crime, gun control, sex education, creationism, “family values,” and prayer in public schools.
2. Conservative Christians, particularly those who call themselves fundamentalists, have been historically reticent to “get involved in politics.”
3.There are no direct biblical commands declaring gambling a sin. And unlike narcotics, which exercise an immediate negative impact upon the user, the harmful effects of habitual gambling take longer to reveal themselves. Moral arguments against gambling are, therefore, more difficult to develop. In a recent survey, George Barna found that only 28 percent of “born again” Christians believe casinos should be illegal in the United States.31
4.) Christians are just as materialistic as everyone else. The lure of quick riches entices Christians to gamble too.
For these reasons as well as others, theological disapproval does not always translate to social or political opposition. Christians seem to be just as uninformed and unconcerned as everyone else.
THUS SAITH THE LORD
There is no “Eleventh Commandment” in the Bible saying “Thou shalt not gamble.” However, gambling violates at least five doctrines of Scripture: the sovereignty of God, stewardship, covetousness, brotherly love, and God’s instruction not to be brought under the power of anything.
Sovereignty of God
Belief in luck and belief in a sovereign God are mutually exclusive, for if an omniscient, omnipotent Creator God exists then luck makes no sense. Things don’t “just happen.” Nothing — including the secondary causes operative in the universe (the “laws” of nature and human choices) — happens outside of God’s will and disposition. So belief in God not only dispells any idea of luck, it also rejects any idea of chance as a determining factor in natural events or people’s destiny. “Depending upon luck and chance is a philosophy which deifies an impersonal view of life and of reality.”32 Any trust in luck rather than God is therefore a form of idolatry.
What appears to be chance to the finite human mind is known to a sovereign God. Casting of lots, for example, is a biblical illustration not of gambling (for no money or other value was placed at risk in hopes of greater gain) but of individuals trusting a sovereign God to direct the “chance” disposition or direction of the lay of the lots. People used “chance” to understand God’s will. Their faith was not in chance but in God. But belief in chance as fate stands in direct opposition to a purposeful creation, ordered and directed by the Sovereign God of the universe. Chance without God is the personification of anarchy and nihilism. God controls, not chance (Amos 3:6).33
The idea that events are ultimately disposed merely by chance is akin to superstition. Pagan superstition is a violation of God’s will. Worshipping the gods of luck and chance is an offense to His character. Gambling is a kind of “secularized divination.”34 It promotes a world view in direct contradiction to biblical Christianity.
Stewardship
God says in Proverbs that “he who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment” (12:11). People often chase fantasies, yielding to the lure of quick riches, the “something-for-nothing” enchantment. But God gives people time, talent, and treasure with an expectation of accountability (Matt. 25:14–30). The Bible teaches that we are to use our God–given wealth to support our families, God’s work, the government, and the needy.
Gambling can undermine the foundations of Christian stewardship — work, rationality, and responsibility. But work is both a command and a gift of God (2 Thess. 3:6–12). And reason is an essential part of being human. “Irresponsibility is man’s abdication of his humanity. We are made to be moral decision-making creatures.”35
Covetousness
Gambling feeds covetousness, the opposite of God’s call for contentment (Phil. 4:11–12). It masquerades as harmless fun while it eventually sucks the dollars and sometimes the life out of those who embrace it (1 Tim. 6:6–10). The basis of all antigambling legislation is the necessity of curbing or controlling covetousness, the very natural and selfish desire to get something for nothing.36
Love Thy Neighbor
Gambling creates a condition in which one person’s gain is necessarily many other persons’ loss. As such, gambling militates against brotherly love, justice, and mercy (Matt. 22:37–40; Mic. 6:8).
Gambling substitutes love of self or love of money for love of neighbor (Rom. 14:21; 15:1; 1 Tim. 6:6–10). Martin Luther said that “money won by gambling is not without self seeking and love of self is not without sin.”37 Gambling, unlike legitimate business practices wherein both parties gain, creates a condition in which individuals are willingly duped of their resources in a something-for-nothing exchange.
To take from one’s neighbor in an unfair exchange is not love, to set up a system in which those least able to afford it lose their livelihood is not justice, and to continue operating a system that exploits human weakness while promoting personal pleasure and profit over others’ pain and loss is not mercy. While it is true that the legitimate marketplace can operate without regard for the Christian value of love of neighbor, this i
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*Is Online Gambling Illegal In Us
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America Usa
*Is Online Gambling Illegal In America
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America 2020
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America 2019
*Is Online Gambling Banned In America Right Now
Every type of gambling is practiced in the USA, however, the rules and regulation vary from state to state. Online gambling is widely enjoyed in America and makeup to the 70% of the gamblers. From sports betting to online casinos, pretty much everything is legal in the states. Compared to the offline market, the online gambling market is quite big. The most widely practiced ways of Internet gambling in America is playing the online casino games.
*Now says the U.S. Wire Act bars all internet gambling that involves interstate transactions, reversing its position from 2011 that only sports betting was prohibited under the law passed.
*First off, disclaimer. I do not monitor legal developments regularly on this topic. Subject to that, my understanding is that yes, online gambling is banned in most states outside of Nevada and some other states that have legalized gambling.
Status of Online Gambling in the USA The government does not prohibit any kind of online gambling activity. However, there may be some websites that are not easily accessible to the people of America. But people seem to enjoy gambling everywhere in the country without fearing much about the laws.
Sports BettingIt is legal to bet on the sports online in many parts of America. In the 1990s, a rule was passed that stated that if the Government does not impose new hard and fast rules for sports betting, the states will be free to regulate it themselves. While some of the states legalized it, a few others prohibited sports betting.
Later, with the inception of the “online world”, most of the states legalized sports betting. The rest of the states remain quiet but native people enjoy online betting in sports anyways. The sports betting industry in the Americas might not be as big as in Europe but they enjoy good success. To match the standards of the cool European casinos like bästa svenska casino, American casinos still need to develop.
Online Casinos A gambler’s favorite place is a casino. Lucky for the people of America, there are several wonderful, actively running licensed online casinos in the country. Though the unlicensed casinos are not legal, people actively play games like poker and slots for high stakes anyway.
Online Gambling Laws in The United States Gambling laws can be a rather complex topic these days as there are several US federal gambling laws to account for such as the UIGEA, and the Federal Wire Act, as well as, several individual state gambling laws.
The rule passed in 2006 banned online casinos and it was remarked as illegal to place any type of bets on websites. According to the rule, the websites were asked to not accept any kinds of bet from the players. A few years after the rule was imposed, some of the websites got a license from the government. These casinos provided the players with the best casino action in a legally licensed environment.
At present, most of the states have legalized online casinos. Poker and slots are by far the most demanded games in the casinos. Many live poker tables and live tournaments are provided to the customers from the biggest casinos worldwide on the casino websites.
Status of Legality Still, some of the states in the USA do not license the online website for gamblers. They usually block the money transfer options and therefore the players are not able to place a wager. The rules are not too strict and people enjoy and practice gambling at unlicensed online gambling places.
To avoid any legal issues, some of the online gambling websites have partnered with the licensed third-party. This enables all the features for the gamblers and it makes gambling totally legal. The number of online gambling stores is increasing rapidly as people are opting for online casinos more than the land-based ones.
|Photo by Fancycrave.com from Pexels
Article ID: DE209 | By: Rex M. Rogers
Summary
If baseball once was America’s national pastime, it’s been replaced by a $550 billion-per-year obsession — gambling. Gambling feeds the self-indulgent, instant-gratification mindset that has plagued America in recent decades. Beneath its glittery surface lurk the parallel tragedies of increasing addiction and a decreasing devotion to spirituality. Most Christian churches have been silent about gambling. Scripture is not. Even without a direct commandment, “Thou shalt not gamble,” the Bible offers numerous principles that militate against the practice. Informed Christians will challenge such social evils as state-sponsored gambling and the use of gambling for fundraising. Gambling is a bankrupt abandonment of reason and religion, and in the long run everyone loses.
Mark Twain shrewdly observed that “the best throw at dice is to throw them away.”1 Americans no longer agree. Gambling is the newest Great American Pastime.
State lotteries began in 1964 with New Hampshire, and now bring in $30 billion per year in 37 states and the District of Columbia.2 Some 55 million Americans play lotteries once per month, spending $88 million per day — more than they spend per day on groceries.3
What began as a trickle with state lotteries became a flash flood in 1988 when Native American tribes began taking advantage of the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which permitted them to operate casinos on tribal lands. Nearly 300 Indian-run casinos now exist in 28 states with 186 of the 557 federally recognized tribes participating. About 30 casinos are opening per year,4 and additional tribes are vying for a stake in what some have called “the new buffalo.”5
Gambling expenditures now top $550 billion per year.6 That’s more money than Americans spend per year on films, books, amusements, and music entertainment combined. It’s about $1.5 billion per day or an increase of roughly 3,000 percent in the past 20 years.7
With the exception of horse and dog racing, gambling is increasing in every form. Riverboat, dockside, and other off-shore gambling enterprises, including cruise ships, are being proposed in several states as “limited” gambling.
Off-track, parimutuel, jai alai, keno, and video betting are also increasing. So are raffles and bingo. Business Week observed that gambling outlets are becoming “almost ubiquitous” as “mob-affiliated bookies and numbers runners are being supplanted by state governments, charitable and religious groups, and blue-chip entertainment-leisure conglomerates that say they’re in the ‘gaming’ business.”8
THE VICE OF CHOICE
Some 95 percent of American citizens have gambled at some time in their lives. About 82 percent have played the lottery, 75 percent have played slot machines, 50 percent have bet on horse or dog races, 44 percent have gambled with cards, and 34 percent gamble via bingo. Approximately 26 percent have bet on sports events. About 74 percent of the American adult population have gambled in casinos. Polls indicate that at least 89 percent of the American population approves of casino gambling.9
The acceptance of gambling into everyday life is a historic shift in cultural philosophy. University of Nevada, Las Vegas, professor William N. Thompson observed that “the era of expanded legalized gambling has coincided with a trend toward increased permissiveness in society. There certainly is a connection between attitudes about lifestyle, sex, pornography — even abortion and occasional drug use — and attitudes toward gambling. The notion that government has no business in our bedrooms relates to the notion that government has no business telling us how to spend our leisure time and our own money as long as we are doing so without coercion or harm to others.”10
The ethic of self-denial, saving, and capital accumulation is being replaced with a hedonistic consumerism, what Christopher Lasch called the “culture of narcissism.”11 Deferred gratification is shelved in favor of instant demand. Americans want more, and they want it now.
Many Americans no longer work for future earthly or spiritual rewards. They only consume and receive less and less satisfaction from it.12
The philosophy of gambling undercuts one’s ability and desire to defer gratification in order to accomplish a goal. Individual enterprise, thrift, effort, and self-denial are set aside for chance gain, immediate satisfaction, and self-indulgence. In this sense, gambling exemplifies a reversal of American values.13
THIRD TIME’S A CHARM?
Whittier Law School gambling expert I. Nelson Rose believes a third wave of legalized gambling is washing over the United States.14 The first wave began in colonial America when lottery management companies took their place among the largest early-nineteenth-century businesses.15 A healthy economy together with lottery corruption contributed to the decline of legal lotteries by the 1820s.
The second wave of legal gambling began when Southern states looked for revenue after the Civil War. Gambling was a major diversion in late-nineteenth-century Western gold and silver mining camps. Legalized gambling’s second wave of popularity began losing strength in the 1880s with the Louisiana State Lottery scandal (in which local lottery fundraisers evolved into mail fraud and criminal interstate commerce involving corrupt government officials, intrigue, and murder). By 1894, state lotteries were condemned by law, and 36 states adopted antilottery text in their state constitutions.16
While gambling has been legal in (and largely limited to) Nevada since 1931, the third wave of legalized gambling in the United States began in 1964 with the inception of the New Hampshire State Lottery. By 1984, a majority of states had legalized lotteries.17
Bingo was legalized in 1937 in Rhode Island. Some 46 states, the District of Columbia, and all the Canadian provinces now have legalized bingo.18
Horse race betting is legal in 42 states and all Canadian provinces, dog race betting in 19 states, and jai alai games in four states. All 10 Canadian provinces and 48 American states now permit some form of legal gambling. By the year 2000, some experts have predicted that 40 percent of U.S. households will be participating in legalized commerical gambling.19
Legalized commercial gambling is now growing at breakneck speed, spurred by cash–hungry governments, gambling industry promotion of “gaming” as entertainment, and the appeal of new, high-tech video gambling. Some antigambling counselors believe that “decades of church–sponsored gambling [have] also tended to lend approval to games of chance.”20
Only two states still maintain a no-legal-gambling policy: Hawaii and Utah. Hawaii debates the matter periodically. While 60 percent of Hawaiians polled favor a lottery, enough citizens are concerned about damaging the state’s image as an island paradise that lotteries and other commercial gambling are consistently rejected.21
Eugene Martin Christiansen, a gambling industry consultant, believes America’s new love affair with gambling “is part of a fundamental change that is irreversible at this point because the country is changing with fewer people going to church, more older people with time and money on their hands, and especially, with state lottery advertising campaigns that make it seem that buying lottery tickets is almost a patriotic duty.”22
LOSING THE BET
Gambling is a spiritual and financial timebomb in a pretty package, and no demographic group is immune to the social pathologies associated with it.23 Compulsive gambling is increasing rapidly in all population groups, even among teens.
The fastest growing “addiction” among high school and college-age young people is problem gambling, with as much as seven percent or 1.3 million teens considered addicted. Dr. Durand Jacobs, a pioneer in the treatment of problem gambling, believes the rate among teens is at least 10 percent, about twice the rate among adults.24
Howard Schaffer, director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Addiction Studies, predicted, “We will face in the next decade or so more problems with youth gambling than we’ll face with drug use.”25 The National Institute of Mental Health notes that “addiction” to gambling is growing fastest among teenagers.26 Suicide rates are twice as high among teenagers with gambling problems,27 and teenagers are nearly two-and-one-half times as likely as adults to become compulsive gamblers.28Is Online Gambling Illegal In Us
Durand Jacobs noted that “public understanding of gambling is where our understanding of alcoholism was some 40 or 50 years ago. Unless we wake up soon to gambling’s darker side, we’re going to have a whole new generation lost to this addiction.”29
From lotteries in the 1960s to casinos in the 1990s, the gambling industry has grown more rapidly and more explosively than any business in American history. Legalized commercial gambling is now one of the largest industries in the U.S. leisure economy.30
IT’S NOT IN THE CARDS
While the tidal wave of legalized commercial gambling has engulfed the country, the Christian community has greeted this development with a deafening silence. A few local battles have taken place, and during the past two years, Christian leaders such as Gary Bauer, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, and Ralph Reed have begun to speak out, but so far gambling has garnered very little national attention.
Several reasons may explain why Christians have been rather slow to respond to the spread of legalized commercial gambling:
1.) The conservative Christian “agenda” is packed, focusing on issues like abortion, pornography, crime, gun control, sex education, creationism, “family values,” and prayer in public schools.
2. Conservative Christians, particularly those who call themselves fundamentalists, have been historically reticent to “get involved in politics.”
3.There are no direct biblical commands declaring gambling a sin. And unlike narcotics, which exercise an immediate negative impact upon the user, the harmful effects of habitual gambling take longer to reveal themselves. Moral arguments against gambling are, therefore, more difficult to develop. In a recent survey, George Barna found that only 28 percent of “born again” Christians believe casinos should be illegal in the United States.31
4.) Christians are just as materialistic as everyone else. The lure of quick riches entices Christians to gamble too.
For these reasons as well as others, theological disapproval does not always translate to social or political opposition. Christians seem to be just as uninformed and unconcerned as everyone else.
THUS SAITH THE LORD
There is no “Eleventh Commandment” in the Bible saying “Thou shalt not gamble.” However, gambling violates at least five doctrines of Scripture: the sovereignty of God, stewardship, covetousness, brotherly love, and God’s instruction not to be brought under the power of anything.
Sovereignty of God
Belief in luck and belief in a sovereign God are mutually exclusive, for if an omniscient, omnipotent Creator God exists then luck makes no sense. Things don’t “just happen.” Nothing — including the secondary causes operative in the universe (the “laws” of nature and human choices) — happens outside of God’s will and disposition. So belief in God not only dispells any idea of luck, it also rejects any idea of chance as a determining factor in natural events or people’s destiny. “Depending upon luck and chance is a philosophy which deifies an impersonal view of life and of reality.”32 Any trust in luck rather than God is therefore a form of idolatry.
What appears to be chance to the finite human mind is known to a sovereign God. Casting of lots, for example, is a biblical illustration not of gambling (for no money or other value was placed at risk in hopes of greater gain) but of individuals trusting a sovereign God to direct the “chance” disposition or direction of the lay of the lots. People used “chance” to understand God’s will. Their faith was not in chance but in God. But belief in chance as fate stands in direct opposition to a purposeful creation, ordered and directed by the Sovereign God of the universe. Chance without God is the personification of anarchy and nihilism. God controls, not chance (Amos 3:6).33
The idea that events are ultimately disposed merely by chance is akin to superstition. Pagan superstition is a violation of God’s will. Worshipping the gods of luck and chance is an offense to His character. Gambling is a kind of “secularized divination.”34 It promotes a world view in direct contradiction to biblical Christianity.
Stewardship
God says in Proverbs that “he who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment” (12:11). People often chase fantasies, yielding to the lure of quick riches, the “something-for-nothing” enchantment. But God gives people time, talent, and treasure with an expectation of accountability (Matt. 25:14–30). The Bible teaches that we are to use our God–given wealth to support our families, God’s work, the government, and the needy.
Gambling can undermine the foundations of Christian stewardship — work, rationality, and responsibility. But work is both a command and a gift of God (2 Thess. 3:6–12). And reason is an essential part of being human. “Irresponsibility is man’s abdication of his humanity. We are made to be moral decision-making creatures.”35
Covetousness
Gambling feeds covetousness, the opposite of God’s call for contentment (Phil. 4:11–12). It masquerades as harmless fun while it eventually sucks the dollars and sometimes the life out of those who embrace it (1 Tim. 6:6–10). The basis of all antigambling legislation is the necessity of curbing or controlling covetousness, the very natural and selfish desire to get something for nothing.36
Love Thy Neighbor
Gambling creates a condition in which one person’s gain is necessarily many other persons’ loss. As such, gambling militates against brotherly love, justice, and mercy (Matt. 22:37–40; Mic. 6:8).
Gambling substitutes love of self or love of money for love of neighbor (Rom. 14:21; 15:1; 1 Tim. 6:6–10). Martin Luther said that “money won by gambling is not without self seeking and love of self is not without sin.”37 Gambling, unlike legitimate business practices wherein both parties gain, creates a condition in which individuals are willingly duped of their resources in a something-for-nothing exchange.
To take from one’s neighbor in an unfair exchange is not love, to set up a system in which those least able to afford it lose their livelihood is not justice, and to continue operating a system that exploits human weakness while promoting personal pleasure and profit over others’ pain and loss is not mercy. While it is true that the legitimate marketplace can operate without regard for the Christian value of love of neighbor, this i
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