Wake Up, Look Up

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 Zach Weihrauch. And in today's episode, we're asking the question, can cheating be just? This is based on a Wall Street Journal article about a syndicate of, gamblers that actually took down the Texas lottery.

The story goes like this. Texas runs a state lottery like a lot of states, and you have to pick six numbers, one to 50. And if your combination of numbers, you know, the winning numbers, then you win the lottery. Of course, a lot of times, no one picks the winning numbers, and so the amount keeps going up and up and up further incentivizing people to play. And so what happened is a gambling syndicate realized that if they purchased every possible number of the Texas lottery, they would inevitably win and inevitably make money, and that's what they did.

They purchased $25,800,000 worth of tickets, a dollar a ticket. So 25,800,000 number combinations. It accounted for about 99.3% of all possible numbers. That's how many tickets they could print in three days. By the way, all of this legal, they purchased the ticket printing machines from the state of Texas itself, went to licensed vendors to get tickets, and in three days had 25,800,000 tickets printed, guaranteeing themselves an opportunity to win.

And that is what they did. They won and doubled up their money, making $57,800,000 when they won the lottery, and they just sent one of their employees to go pick up the check. Now this has caused outrage in Texas state officials who are saying that they cheated, that that's against the spirit of the game, that everyone else who bought a lottery ticket had no way of knowing that this syndicate was out there purchasing up all the other tickets and making it basically impossible for an average person to win. Their argument is that they exploited the system. They exploited the state by creating an unfair environment and then profiting from it.

Gee, where have I heard of a system like that before? Oh, yeah. It's called the lottery. Because you see, that's what the lottery is. It is an unfair, exploitative system designed to separate the poor from their money by dangling this mathematically improbable possibility of winning so that the state can take your money.

It is overwhelmingly true that the poor play the lottery. It is overwhelmingly true that the people who run the lottery know they have almost no chance of winning, and it doesn't stop them from doing it. And so when a syndicate comes in and plays by the rules, doing everything legal to manipulate a manipulative system and to profit from it, I say to the state, turnabout is fair play. The Bible says it this way, you reap what you sow. If it's okay for the state to profit off of exploit exploiting people, then it's okay for this syndicate to profit by exploiting the state.

The Bible tells us time and time again that systems that prey upon the poor, like, see, for example, Proverbs twenty two twenty two, are inherently wrong, inherently evil. They are indicative, see Isaiah five twenty, of a moral darkness. Societies that allow the poor to be preyed on are morally bankrupt societies. The truth is that the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil. That's first Timothy six ten.

And that's not just evil outside of the government. That's evil inside of the government. The Texas state officials are not mad that someone won the lottery. They must have known that would be possible when they instituted the lottery. They're mad because a road map has been established for how you can beat the lottery before it rings every dollar it can out of the poor in Texas.

That's what they're mad about, and that's disgusting. The the Bible tells us in Galatians six that corruption reaps corruption. You sow corruption, you get it. If you build into your society a morally bankrupt system like the lottery, don't be surprised when those kinds of people show up and actually devise a system to beat you. In an era of information and data and AI and analytics, the state is no longer the smartest person at the gambling table, and they deserve what they get.

You see, the church should have been standing against the lottery and gambling for a long time. We should have been pointing to the moral bankruptcy of a state preying upon its own poor people. We haven't been doing that. I hope we will in the future. In the meantime, justice comes in whatever form it comes.

If Texas officials really cared about Texas, they'd stop whining and and the news or on social media about gamblers, and they start looking themselves in the mirror. They start going to God and looking for what an actual just society looks like. By the way, not just Texas, but every state that does a lottery. If you don't wanna be cheated, then stop cheating your people. 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. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!