For information on the General Council gambling policies and for resources including theological reflection, analysis and workshops go to The United Church of Canada website www.united-church.ca and search: gambling. 

    While I was growing up, gambling was pretty widely viewed by our church/society as an affliction which could lead to the loss of, or at least inflict some damage on, the soul. Although it was often portrayed as a harmless and naughty pursuit by men (Daren Stevens and Dagwood Bumstead played poker with “the boys”), at its worst it was a vice which existed in the wilderness of alleys and backrooms, the haunts of the corrupt. It was often closely associated with illegal drugs, prostitution and any number of other criminal activities. Now, what was once the dangerous vice seems to have lost broken free of its scurrilous neighbours, cleaned up its act and become quite domestic. It has wandered into the lives of the majority of people across our nation, virtually unchecked and in fact, quite welcomed.

This turnabout has confused me and I know that I am not alone.    On the one hand, I live in a community with a high unemployment rate and there has been little to celebrate in the local economy for some time. There is now talk about building a charity casino which could employ 20 or 30 people full time and bring in millions of dollars for distribution to local charities. That’s good news for a lot of people!   

On the other hand, I understand that as many as 4% of the people in our population are susceptible to becoming addicted to gambling. Perhaps this is not a very big number when you consider on average, that every gambling addict will adversely affect the lives of about 17 other people, the numbers grow quickly. (Statistics quoted by guests on CBC Radio Program Morningside on Wednesday March 19, 1997.) I haven’t multiplied out the numbers or found out who these 17 are, but I think it is safe to assume that more than a few of them are children who are entirely dependent upon adults for everything they have or don’t have. In our society which already has a sickening number of children living in poverty, this sounds like more bad news kids don’t need.   

And so it goes...the question of whether gambling in our culture is a blessing or a curse is not answered easily and it is one with which I continue to struggle. There are many papers written on gambling, replete with statistics to prove one thing or another. This is not one of those. These words reflect my own present thoughts and reflections on gambling, presented in the hope that they move others to do likewise. We are witnesses to a major shift in thinking about how we gather money to support our communities and gambling seems to be at the top of the list. I am not convinced this method will serve us in the long term and I suspect there are others who share my suspicion.

For instance, in almost every church gathering (at least at Presbytery or Conference level) where gambling has been discussed I have heard people support the view that while gambling may solve some problems, like raising money, individuals who become addicted may behave in ways which will devastate their families. There seems to be wide support for the church to take the moral high ground and question the sanity of governments who are the main proponents of gambling...BUT...at the same time, many of the speakers in the discussion hold lottery tickets on the next draw. It doesn’t make much sense. I wonder if the church, at the level of Conference and Presbytery, is being sucked into another situation where it becomes the moral authority calling for the “right thing” while at the same time, some congregations are running bus trips to casinos. Is it another case of setting the distant church (Conference or Presbytery level) up as a “superparent” because we need someone to hold the truth for us even though we have no intention of paying any attention to what WE WANT it to say?

   I remember gambling with my buddies on Saturday afternoons when I was in my early teens. Most of us had never played poker or gambled before but one or two of the guys knew how we should act. First we made the room dark and dingy and smoked a lot. Cigars, either the real stogies or the Colts with the wine tipped plastic ends were the best, but cigarettes also served our purpose. No light or air from the outside was allowed in the room by drapes and windows kept tightly and completely closed. This added to our delightful sense of doing something forbidden. We laid out our nickels, dimes and quarters in carefully sorted piles which shrank and grew over the course of the afternoon. We played for big money back then - nickel ante and fifty cent maximum bet. Fortunes as high as 4 or 5 dollars were won and lost all in the same afternoon. We had fun but sometimes we got pretty serious and more than one minor fist fight broke out over accusations of cheating. I liked playing poker hands like :Kings and Little Ones Are Wild: which meant everyone had a mitt full of good cards and the betting got fast and furious. However, not infrequently, because there were so many wild cards, it also resulted in the ridiculous situation of more than one player having hands of 4 or 5 aces. (Sorting out these ties were not easy because life holds that anyone with 5 aces should always win!) But my favourite was “In Between” because it was such a simple game and no one had to remember things like whether a full house beat a flush or vice versa. This meant more games could be played and the pace was exciting. I am not a stranger to the thrill of playing for money, even though it was measured in nickels and dimes.

My next experience with gambling came when I grew up and started going to stag parties in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Most of the guys there were like me. We played the crown and anchor games until we lost because we really went just to donate some money to the groom-to-be and have a beer with our friends. But off to the side or in another room something else was going on. There I saw my first real gamblers. At one stag I saw a man bet three thousand dollars on one roll of the dice. He lost. But dug into his pocket for more. His face was bathed in sweat but he was not drunk, he was high on the game. There was an intense feeling in the room which felt like a narcotic, created by the smell and fear of risk. This was the Saturday afternoon stuff of my childhood gone crazy. These were working men with families and responsibilities who were my friends, but the look in their eyes was not a look I knew. I stopped going to stags after that night because (the gross and stupid stag movies notwithstanding) I had seen the dark side of what has always been for me, just a thing we did as kids for nickels and quarters. It disturbed me and made me afraid of what adults could do to each other, themselves and their own families.

Now it is the 90’s and games of chance are everywhere. Never in my wildest dreams, did I ever think I’d grow up to see gambling as a normal everyday way of life for us in our society. The Rama and Windsor casinos have become the success stories of province. There is an entire dimension of life going on all around me now that I know little or nothing about. The multitude of lottery tickets look very sexy under the glass at the convenience store. They appear so confident, every shiny glittery one of them promises to be a winner. (Does this facade of losing tickets dull slightly after the draw?) In our mall, the information booth is also the lottery ticket sales booth. I wonder how many in the last 5 have lined up to ask a question? Almost every time I’m in there, there are at least 5 people in line and a few are off to the side tearing open Nevada Tickets. Not much conversation is going on. They are playing to win, these people, and winning is a serious business.

As a society we seem to have found a way to pry money out of people’s pockets with hardly any resistance. The magic lubricant has been found and many people like it a whole heck of a lot. Gambling is more fun than paying taxes. It looks like a win-win arrangement. So what is the problem? Those that want to gamble may end up paying more than their fair share but that is their choice. No one is making them gamble AND some of them are going to win lots of money! You don’t get that kind of a pay off with taxes. Sounds pretty fair doesn’t it?   

But then the trouble isn’t with the winning. It is the losing. It is a system in which some people lose a little so others can win a lot. Trouble is that some people end up losing a little a lot of the times and that adds up. Not only in money but in hopes which are dashed again and again. how many times can a person lose before it starts to really affect them and all the people around them? Luck remains an elusive and fickle blessing bestowed on the chosen ones. Except for the high stakes poker player who may bluff their way to the jackpot, there is little or no skill involved in most games. Experience does not make you a better 649 or One Armed Bandit player. A first timer has as much chance as anyone. Perseverance and dedication to a game has no merit. Likewise fidelity and stick-to-it-ness are flattened by -- luck. Gambling can reduce life to a game like snakes and ladders where people slide and crash depending only on which square they land on. And life at its best is most certainly not a game.

But so what-if people want to gamble why not just go with the flow and join in. Perhaps there is no harm to most people. Maybe gambling, like alcohol, can be very well tolerated by the vast majority of adults who find their own limits. I suspect that this is the position of many if not most of the people in our Church. Maybe, but that doesn’t still mean that we as a church shouldn’t talk about what gambling means to us as Christians. That is where our dialogue needs to start. Never mind the society around us for which we no longer are the imposing and stern parent (thank God!). I think a good case can be made for rejecting any system which supports winners at the cost of losers. Jesus told us that what we do to each other we do to ourselves and God. From the gospel I think it is fair to say that even if only a few people are going to be harmed by gambling that is too many in the kingdom of God. Lost sheep and coins, even if they are in the extreme minority, call for immediate attention.   

Over the past few decades we have learned that what we thought were protective boundaries were in fact, illusions which are being stripped away. We understand now that cutting down the rain forest on the west coast affects life all over the world. The internet and global economy supports the emerging view that we are connected, for better and for worse, to people around the world. The amazing and very strange science reported by the “new physicists: include phenomenon like field theories (which suggest that almost every particle in every galaxy in every universe is held in relationship by an invisible force) also supports this view. We are discovering how far our relationships and how deep our connectedness to all life really goes. With our present and expanding consciousness of such a web (even if we don’t buy into Jesus’ stories) can we really expect to take from others without harming ourselves?

I suspect that in three years to come there will arise questions and problems with and about gambling which we haven’t imagined. The benefits seem to good to be true, and that makes me wary. Everyone seems to be doing it and who can blame them? Who can resist the multi-million dollar ad campaigns which promise hope in a society so desperate to believe in something? But it feels to easy, like seduction often does, and it may well end in a society which is quite unlike any we have ever seen or want. I wonder about this path we are on and what it means ..... what think you?  

Produced by Brian Goodings, May 1997