Part 3, Chapter 32
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Gambling, Gambling, Gambling. People play the Lottery, they spend time in casinos and they gamble in many other ways. What is the point of gambling? The point is to win money. Some will argue that it is for entertainment, but overall, most people are gambling to get money. “Dice, cards, and the like games of chance, are not merely dangerous amusements…but they are plainly bad and harmful” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 138). Why? “Such games are unreasonable—the winner often has neither skill nor industry to boast of, which is contrary to reason” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 138). Games like roulette, craps, blackjack, poker are not good. Now some of these take a little skill and some not at all, still they are games of chance and we can’t control how the ball will bounce, how the dice will roll, how the cards will come out. “As victory ought to be the reward of skill or labor, which it cannot be in mere games of chance” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 138). Gambling is more about chance than it is about skill!
We gamble to win! “The only pleasure in gambling is to win, and this cannot be a satisfactory pleasure, since it can only be enjoyed at the expense of your antagonist” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 138). Thus, gambling doesn’t help us to live virtues; it is about indulgence and winning. Consider this, many times, when we lose, we say or do things that are not virtuous, people do not want to be around us at these moments. And many times when we win, we make sure to mess with our opponents so that the next time we play, we will win. Instead of gambling our life away, we should be involved with something that will help us to grow more devout.