Wake Up, Look Up

Foreign hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm, um, Zach Weirock, and today's episode we're asking the question, has gambling ruined sports? So this has prompted by an article I read recently in the Atlantic looking at what baseball is dealing with in the arena of gambling. And if you're a Cleveland Guardians fan like I am, you know this story all too well. That's because two pitchers for the Guardians, Classe, uh, and Ortiz, were recently rolled up in a federal indictment alleging that they were rigging specific pitches for gamblers. Uh, despite the fact that Class A, for example, was making 4.5 million million a year, he was intentionally throwing balls and strikes at different times to influence the outcome of what's called a prop bet. You might think about gambling as I think the Guardians are going to win or they're going to lose. They're going to win by this much, lose by that much. But prop bets are much more specific, like, how many hits is a particular player going to get? Or in this case, how many strikes or balls, or even in this at bat, is the next pitch going to be a strike or a ball? Which means that the players on the field, if they know about the bets and are so inclined, can pretty easily manipulate the outcome. And as a result, if they work with gamblers, can make themselves and the gamblers a lot of money, quote, unquote, unfairly. And I just say, quote, unquote, because the whole premise of fairness in gambling is a little bit of a myth. After all, these companies that build massive wealth off of gambling are building their wealth off of figuring out how to cheat you or take your money from you. The odds, the bets, they're all calculated to the nth degree to make sure that you lose. As anyone who's been to Vegas can tell you that even the table games themselves are rigged in such a way that the odds that you keep winning are very small. I, uh, use the word fairness in quotes because these companies, at the end of the day, are. Are parasites. They do not provide anything. They seek to take all your money until you have none left. And at the end of their ad, they'll run a 1-800-number you can call for when you're bankrupt because of them. Look, gambling is a huge problem in our culture, and our culture has lost its moral compass with the legalization of marijuana or the legalization of gambling. This idea that people should be able to decide for themselves, well, of course that Sounds great. But until massive amounts of people choose things that are unwise and unhealthy, and then the bill as a culture comes due, in this case bringing to mind whether or not you can trust what's happening in Major League Baseball or the NBA or the NFL, all of which who have had major gambling controversies. So how should we think about this as Christians? Well, let's start here. You know, 1 Timothy 6:10 famously says, the love of money is, is a root of all kinds of evil. Look, a, uh, culture built on greed is a culture that in which people will run as far and as fast as they can to whatever will benefit them financially. Class A Ortiz, other people in other sports, they are simply reflections of our own cultural soul. We believe the lie that more money will make us happy, more money will, will provide us rich and rewarding lives. As long as we believe that lie, we will end up tipping pitches, cheating on our taxes, cutting corners in any way that we can, justified by our greed. So the first thing Christians must do before we point the finger at baseball or football or basketball, at Clase or Ortiz, is point the finger at my own heart. Am I caught up in this cycle of greed? Because if I am, here's my second point. It might lead me to gambling. And gambling harms families. Listen, Proverbs 13:11 says, wealth gained hastily will dwindle. There's a lot of professional athletes who make a lot of money very quickly end up, uh, broke. That's because there's something to be said for work ethic. There's something to be said for building. When we come into money quickly, it is very rarely for our good. So, so even that big payday you're chasing when you gamble, thinking, if I hit this trifecta, look what I'm gonna have. What you get might not even ultimately be very good. Go read about lottery winners, for example, and how often their lives are not actually blessed. Uh, the third thing here is this. Sports have always been an idol in American culture. I mean, I'm a sports fan. I've had to wrestle with that at times. But gambling is taking it to the tenth power. You know, Romans 1:25 warns us that when a culture exchanges the truth about God for a lie, it is on a rapid descent into a hellish kind of living. We're so caught up in sports and greed that when you put the two together, we are destroying our families. Listen, any therapist, uh, or self help article or call in show will tell you that the number one addiction call they are getting after it used to be pornography. Now it is gambling. There's a good chance, especially if you have a relationship with young men in that 18 to 35 age bracket, that they themselves have lost more money than they care to admit to. Gambling. It is actually hurting people. And this is where the church has got to do better. Matthew 5:14. Jesus tells us, you are the light of the world. Don't hide that light under the basket. We've got to be talking about greed. We've got to be talking about idolatry. We've got to be telling people that life is about more than money, that there is no shortcut to a genuine life of flourishing. You have to put in the work. And we got to tell that message to ourselves, to our children, in our churches, and in, uh, the larger world. Listen, if you're listening to this episode, and you know, man, I have lost more money on gambling than I really should have. Get help. Raise your hand and say, I have a problem before it is too late. And if this ever comes back on the ballot and you're saying, should this be legal? Should this be illegal? Listen, if something hurts people, then it isn't good, right? And gambling is destroying lives. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. 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