GAMBLING: The Hope
This is the 4th in a series on Gambling – the previous entries are available on the CViE website:
Helping people escape from gambling
There is something very distressing in seeing an animal caught in a trap. Amongst the traders of northern Canada in years past was known a particularly brutal instance of this, the leg-hold trap. While snares were for smaller animals, the huge jaws of the leg-hold trap would snap shut on a larger animal, leaving it to thrash in agony until expiring or being dispatched by a late-arriving trapper. There was no escape.
Gamblers get ensnared, trapped in a vicious downward cycle. The grip on them can seem unbreakable, and their escape impossible. It can lead to a sense of desperation, that while their suffering may not be so graphic, a sense of the helplessness and the ebbing of life can seem just as real.
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous are known for introducing themselves in a meeting in the present tense. So, even if they have long abstained, they ever recognize the present reality of the power and temptation of an addiction, believing that they are never really ‘over it’. The one who would escape the desire for gambling must also bear a sense of their own constant vulnerability.
There are many stages in the formation of a gambling addiction, just as there are ‘gateway’ drugs commonly linked to a drug addiction. There is an enormous personal and financial cost involved in out-of-control gambling, and the Christian would want to be a help at all stages, discouraging the novice and rescuing the captured. Even secular writers can offer reasoned arguments to discourage these costs[1], arguing that they exceed the benefits.
For the Christian, it is the Gospel that inspires their ultimate hope. Hope for themselves, and for others lost to sin, trapped in destructive lifestyles. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, and the Gospel is the promise of passing from death to life, from slavery to freedom. This is a hope that needs to be held out to those who have been enslaved by sinful gambling.
With such vast sums of money in play, it is very much to be expected that there will be many entrapped, and in need of rescue. It is thought that almost half of the populace gambles each month, and the reality is that the way people gamble has fundamentally changed. As a result it is likely that problem gambling may be many times worse than previously estimated.[2]
The vast majority gamble at home.[3] Online gambling during lockdown revealed how easy it is to gamble on smartphone apps or laptops any time of the day or night. What can begin with clicks in private so easily progresses to the lotto and the scratch card and the fruit machine to the bookmakers and the casino – the hook is so easily set before the illusion of self-control is exposed. Over 300,000 people in the UK can be classified as ‘problem gamblers’, according to the Gambling Commission. There are many anecdotes of unhappy winners, people whose lives after a lottery win change in the most significant for the worse, not the better, but the illusion of happy wealth is irresistible to many.
Can the government help? Perhaps to a small degree, but the likely answer is ‘no’, in any meaningful sense, as there are limits to what a government can do. It can make laws, but their impact depends on their suitability and enforcement. How can a law stop the determined single-minded gambler, desperate to ‘make good’ their losses? Restraints on the gambling industry are never going to be effective because there is such strong motivation on both sides of the problem.
In recent years, the Government launched a review of gambling laws, the largest into the advertising and running of the industry since the introduction of the 2005 Gambling Act. But reviews of gambling laws have been promised for a very long time. The slow progress of such measures is testimony enough to their ineffectiveness. For a nation that believes in freedom and the liberty to pursue ‘the dream’ of wealth, the control of individuals’ gambling could be seen as paternalistic and an interference with basic freedoms.
Help from the world
For the individual Christian wanting to help, there are secular methods that can be offered if the perspective of faith is unwelcome.
Online advice is abundant, such as “The 10 most successful ways of overcoming gambling urges”[4]:
1. Plan ahead to avoid boredom
2. Live your life one day at a time
3. Do something completely different
4. Rekindle an old hobby
5. Be especially vigilant leading up to special events
6. Find ways that help you cope better with stress
7. Remind yourself that to gamble is to lose
8. Identify your self-sabotage triggers
9. Visualise your betting firm or casino with a negative slogan
10. Write a daily gratitude list
The remarkable thing about such a list is how ‘common sense’ it is. These are not complicated steps. The straight-forwardness of countering a gambling compulsion is confirmed in the many, many easily accessed YouTube videos on the topic (too many to list here). Yet the problem persists, with the solution seeming to be such a relatively simple one: just stop.
All progress requires a motivated seeker, and secular help might be found via –
NHS
‘Help for problems with gambling’
Gambling Commission
Gamblers Anonymous
Gamblers Anonymous (GA) offers a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other, and given that addictions can be seen as a failure to bond, they seek to mutually solve their common problem. GA is not a religious society, and is composed of people from many religious faiths, along with agnostics and atheists.
Gambling treatment
A report assessing the current gambling treatment system for adults in England, looks at its strengths and opportunities for improvement[5].
Help from the Church
How, then, might the Church help? Christian groups will sometimes join forces to campaign against gambling – especially betting advertising.[6] CARE[7] and The Christian Institute[8] offer extensive information about the law and effects of gambling in the UK.
But what should the focus of the Church be to address an extraordinarily lucrative ‘industry’ that is growing, and, what must be acknowledged, is very much an embedded and enthusiastic part of the culture? How can people be brought to that point, where they just stop?
Compulsive gambling has been defined as an ‘uncontrollable urge’, a serious condition that can destroy lives, according to the Mayo Clinic.[9] Christians understand such powerful and destructive urges, and has a name for them: sin[10]. There is no problem that is too great for the One who can help, and the help for sin is the same whatever the sin: Christ.
The Church can best help those caught up in gambling by calling sinners to repent and seek mercy through the Lord Jesus, that they might be saved from the world, the flesh, and the devil –
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. 1 Timothy 1:15
Sinners are trapped, and Christ came to save them.
The Church ever points not to earthly delights, but to the Treasure that exceeds all wordly treasure –
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Matthew 13:44
-and calls all men to true contentment:
Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Hebrews 13:5
Help that does not deal with sin risks attacking the symptoms but leaving the illness unaddressed. What is required is enduring help, and for people caught up in gambling, that means that the Church must:
Pray
For God to deliver them from all evil.
Preach and Teach
About sin and salvation, about what God calls men away from and who He calls them to.
Ministry
Where appropriate, offer focussed ministry support.
Hospitality
Where appropriate, make available ourselves and our premises, to welcome those groups that offer gamblers hope.
Resource
Point gamblers to resources that help them to see the prevalence of the problem and their own need, that offer constructive assistance to overcome, and that ultimately bring them to the foot of the cross.
Determined gamblers seem almost compelled, as if by a passion – about which the Bible warns,
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 1 Timothy 6:10
Problem gambling is a sin, and like any sin, it enslaves in a pursuit for an idolatrous joy. Christians offer hope, knowing that true freedom (and joy) can only be found in serving God, for –
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24
The great hope for gamblers is a love for Jesus Christ.
[1] ‘The case against legal gambling’: https://www.slowboring.com/p/gambling.
[2] There are eight times as many problem gamblers in Great Britain than previously estimated, and the Gambling Commission believes that problem gamblers make up 2.5 per cent of the population – significantly higher than its 2021 estimate of 0.3 per cent.
[3] https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and-statistics/Statistics-and-research/Statistics/Gambling-key-facts.aspx
[4] https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/the-10-most-successful-ways-of-overcoming-gambling-urges
[5] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gambling-treatment-assessing-the-current-system-in-england
[6] www.christian.org.uk/news/christian-groups-campaign-to-kick-gambling-advertising-out-of-sports
[7] https://care.org.uk/cause/gambling
[8] https://www.christian.org.uk/issue/gambling/
[9] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/compulsive-gambling/symptoms-causes
[10] The Bible does not explicitly declare gambling itself to be sin (for a discussion, see “Is Gambling a Sin?” (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-living-waters-podcast/id1587017158), a podcast that encourages listeners to reflect on their own stance on gambling and challenges them to consider its wider societal implications).
