Dr Paul Allen

New York Lottery (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Tonight a ticket will be chosen worth over half a billion dollars. Lottery agents in New York were selling 1.3 million Mega Millions tickets per hour Thursday. Officials were expecting to sell about 1.2 billion tickets total before the drawing. “Americans spend about $60 billion on the lottery every year,” says Stephen Dubner , co-author of “ Freakonomics .” “More than $500 per American household goes to playing the lottery.” ( CBS This Morning ) There are at least seven reasons you should not gamble with your money in this way — and should tell your congressmen not to support it. 1. It is spiritually suicidal. “Those who desire to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. . . They have pierced themselves with many a pang” ( 1 Timothy 6:7–10 ). 2. It is a kind of embezzlement. Managers don’t gamble with their Master’s money. All you have belongs to God. All

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia The nationwide explosion of legal gambling may well be the most underrated dimension of our moral crisis. With the expansion of lotteries, casino gambling, and new technologies, the gambling industry is poised to grow even further in the next decade. People spent more on gambling than they did on health insurance, dentists, shoes, foreign travel, or household appliances. The Bible is clear on this issue. The entire enterprise of gambling is opposed to the moral worldview revealed in God ’s Word. The basic impulse behind gambling is greed—a basic sin that is the father of many other evils. Greed , covetousness, and avarice are repeatedly addressed by Scripture—always presented as a sin against God, and often accompanied by a graphic warning of the destruction which is greed’s result. The burning desire for earthly riches leads to frustration and spiritual death. In the wisdom literature of the Old Tes