Should a Christian participate in sports betting?

There can be little doubt that all gambling is the outcome of the lust to possess, which is covetousness.

I remember many years ago being asked to take a shilling ticket in a raffle to help a sick man. To take a ticket would be to join in gambling. To refuse to help would lay oneself open to the charge of meanness, which would have reflected on Christ. The way out of the difficulty was plain, and it served to teach two lessons—that a Christian would not gamble, and that a Christian was ready to do good to all, as Scripture exhorts. I gave some money to the man who was getting up the raffle and asked him to present it to his sick comrade. I only mention this as a practical example of how a Christian should act.

Time was when superstition allied to liking for adventure undertook pilgrimages, and organized crusades, neither of these in the least expressing the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, but either of them nobler naturally than pleasure-trips, private or common, to the most renowned, strange, or distant lands, perhaps round the world even, craving after some new and piquant fillip for minds jaded and listless. Need we add the love of gain and even sometimes of gambling brought into bazaars and the like in aid of avowedly Christian objects, with every natural or worldly attraction to swell the funds? What shall we say, if we may say anything, of the pleas for "muscular Christianity", a phrase which to pious ears may seem a mere worldly jest, but which others take in sober seriousness as a right thing and commendable, though only to be defended by the sheerest perversion of God's word?

"S. P." We most surely judge it to be wrong for a Christian man to employ himself in driving people to the races. We do not think that any circumstances could justify him in so doing. If it be a wrong place for him to be found in, how could he consistently earn money by driving others to it? Surely if a Christian is looking to God to supply him with suited employment for his wagon and horses, he will not betake himself to such a resource as driving the poor votaries of pleasure to the godless scenes that are usually enacted on the race course. Oh, for a tender conscience.

It is significant that our Lord bade His disciples, "Take heed, and beware of covetousness" (Luke 12:15), and that His apostle writes by the Holy Spirit, "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 Tim. 6:10).

You can increase your material wealth if you are constantly occupied with becoming richer. But you can also protect it by ignoring the needs of fellow believers and other people. The writers of the New Testament condemn both sharply.

We have read your letter with deep interest and we can enter into your feelings. We believe the Christian is bound to provide for his family, day by day — bound to educate his children and put them in the way of earning an honest livelihood. All this is so plainly commanded in the New Testament as to admit of no question. But these sacred duties leave wholly untouched the question of hoarding up and of speculation. We do not believe in these latter at all. We believe that hoarding covers the soul with rust and speculation fills the heart and mind with care and anxiety.

There is urgent need, dear friend, for watchfulness lest we be ensnared by the money-loving spirit of the day. The devil is seeking to blind the eyes of professing Christians in various ways. He furnishes them with a thousand plausible reasons why they should push and grasp and scrape together. He will even misquote and misapply the Word of God to furnish a plea for money-making to those whose hearts are secretly set upon that object. But oh! the wretchedness of having before the heart such an object as to “make money.” Surely as is the object so is the character. Only think of a saint of God, an heir of glory, hoarding up this world's miserable riches! Think of this in the face of so many of God's people in want and in the knowledge of the claims of the Lord's work at home and abroad! How can we suppose the existence of the life of Christ or the love of God in a soul that can lay by his hundreds and see his brother in need? Impossible. Oh! for a large heart!

Practically, peace and edification are to be the great aim in all these debatable points. If thou hast faith, instead of doubts, so much the better, but have it to thyself before God. Blessed is he who does not judge himself in what he allows, (or approves,) but he who doubts is condemned if he eat, because it is not from faith; but whatsoever is not from faith is sin: that is, whatever is not done in liberty of faith.

Who can indeed estimate the consequences of forcing or persuading one to act against or beyond the light he has from God? The Spirit grieved, the heart at unrest, if not soon hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, — with these things how many others will surely combine, if there be not repentance, to drag the soul downward — "sin"! When shall we fairly, fully, practically accept the apostle's definition, "whatsoever is not of faith IS SIN''?