Is Sports Betting a Sin? A Christian View of Sports, Part 2

Somehow, we got the idea that following Jesus is just a Sunday morning thing.

The God only cares about the spiritual, but what if God wants so much more?

Welcome to Not Just Sunday.

The podcast will equit part-time Christianity and ask what it looks like to give Jesus every

square inch of our lives.

We want to give Jesus every day of the week, not just Sunday, because Jesus is more than

everything in the world, and everything is brighter with Him.

I'm Keith Simon, and I'm Patrick Miller, and we want to invite you on a journey with

us to become Not Just Sunday Christians.

Okay, if you listened last week, you will know that we are continuing our series, Not Just

Sacred.

We're talking about how God created this world, and it's not as though we can divide it

into secular things and sacred things.

The things that your friends care about are things that God cares about to you.

And so last week, we were talking about sports.

We had so much good stuff to say that we had to stop at the middle.

We gabbed too much.

I don't know what happened.

We went on and on about kids' sports.

Okay, yeah, so you got to go back.

If you want to hear what we said, we talked about competitiveness in sports.

Is it wrong to be competitive?

We talked about kids' sports, which is a really sticky topic.

Does God care who wins games?

Oh, yeah, does God care who wins games?

And today, we'll be no less exciting.

We might start with something less exciting just to warm ourselves up, but we are going

to end this episode by talking about sports betting, which is a very, very live topic

in this discussion of how can Christians enjoy or should they not enjoy sports in the

sports world?

So if you're interested in that, make sure that you stick around.

That will probably be the longest part of this conversation.

But again, this is part of a broader thing about sports.

So I kind of want to keep going through the questions, Keith, you're asking questions

last week.

Yeah.

And I think the question that I want to start today with and it's not unrelated to the

gambling thing.

Is it about ethics and sports?

Like, what do sports reveal about us?

Because I think that sports are like little morality plays and they have all these little

lessons to teach us.

And oftentimes what sports does is it reveals something inside of me.

Like, do you play fair?

Do you cheat?

Do you push the boundaries?

And this kind of stuff is everywhere.

Remember the New England Patriots were involved in deflate gate.

Deflating football.

Yeah.

And spying gate.

And I'm not sure if we ever know exactly what happened with all that.

Like, I don't remember.

Did we ever prove that they were doing this?

But the NFL punished them because they came to the conclusion that they had done something

wrong.

And there was the whole Michigan University of Michigan, their Jim Harbour and the Spine

scandal there.

So sometimes what we find is that the drive to competition gets corrupted.

What is good becomes bad and it causes us to do things.

They're immoral.

Well, remember last time we talked about is competition sinful and we said there are

kinds of competition, especially rivalry, where we're trying to destroy your defeat or

define ourselves and our value by being better than other people.

But we said that in the context of sports, competition does have a place because sports,

because of the rules, because of the institution.

It's a place where we have a kind of mutually agreed upon quest for excellence.

Like, I'm going to work as hard as I can and push my body as far as I can and I want

you to do the same because that will push both of us to our limits and that's ultimately

glorifying to God because God designed the body.

And when we do incredible things with the body, that honors him, that magnifies him.

But as you're saying, competition can take us to really dark places.

I thought this was a really interesting story.

There was a physician named Bob Goldman who was from Chicago.

He asked 198 athletes if they would take a bandrug, if they were guaranteed to win and

not be caught.

And 195 of those athletes said yes.

I mean, that's the size of 195 and 198.

That's pretty remarkable.

And then he said he asked them if they would take a performance enhancing substance, if

they knew they would not be caught, win every event they entered in the next five years

and then die from side effects.

Over half said yes.

Wow.

I mean, it's pretty amazing.

Well, it shows that competition can become the all consuming, not just all consuming.

It's not just the competition.

Performance, like my value becomes attached to my ability to perform.

That's right.

I am worthless unless I win.

If that gets revealed in you, it's not just sports that reveal this by the way, but if

that gets revealed in you by whether it's playing intramural sports or high school sports

or sports with your friends, like I will do anything to win, that's a great sign that

there's something going on inside of your heart.

Well, I know we refer to it all the time, but it's just because it's so perfect.

There's that cherry.

It's a fire scene where based on the true story, Harold Abrams, the training for the Olympics

and getting ready to run the 100 yard dash and he says, I have 10 seconds to justify

my existence.

Now, he's justifying his existence, defining who he is and his worth and his value by how

he performs in that race.

The reason we bring it up so much is it's so applicable.

What do you define your existence by?

Maybe for you, it is your business or your family or your appearance.

I don't know, but for a lot of people, it's sports.

It's Ronda Rousey talking to Ellen DeGeneres and talking about how when she lost her

MMA fight, so she was no longer the champion, no longer undefeated, she said, I didn't

know who I was.

I was a nobody.

Who am I, she said, if I'm not, the undefeated MMA champion?

And so when sports defines you, then you end up doing all kinds of immoral things.

Well, and it's funny, Keith, because these things are revealed by any competition, not

just athletic competition.

I struggle to play board games with my family because when I play, I get into this, I need

to win mode.

And I will do virtually anything to be the winner, and when other people win, I'm always

just kind of calling the referees.

You're not playing the rules right or you mess something up, but if people do it to

me, I'm like, what are you talking about?

You know, I play perfectly, and it kind of makes me think about that story you mentioned

earlier.

I think it's about an MLB picture, right?

Yeah.

In 2010, a picture for the Detroit Tigers, his name is Armando Galeraga and he had a perfect

game going.

And it would have been only the 21st perfect game in majorly baseball history, a perfect

game for you.

Those who don't know is the picture gives up no walks, no hits, and there are no errors

by anyone on the field.

There's only 27 batters and 27 outs, and they're extremely rare.

So he is in the last inning, and he's got this perfect game.

Of course, nobody's mentioning it, to jinx you, to mention it, but everybody knows it's

happening.

Everybody's watching.

It's pretty incredible.

And he induces one of the batters to hit a ground ball and the runners thrown out

at first.

And for some unknown reason, this umpire named Jim Joyce, he makes the worst call ever,

at the worst time ever.

I mean, it's obvious to everybody, the whole stadium, I mean, replay is not even close.

It's not like, oh, it's a judgment call, no, it's not even close.

The runner is out.

And for some reason, he called him safe, and this is before the advent of replay.

So he couldn't have a replay.

They couldn't challenge it.

There's none of that.

So Galaraga gets the next batter out, and that means that he has the most disappointing

one hitter in Major League Baseball history.

And so after the game, everybody's stunned.

Like, what do you do?

This guy just went from a perfect game to a one hitter because the umpire made an egregious

call.

And after the game, Galaraga just is like, you know what, Jim Joyce, he's human.

We all make mistakes.

They go, what would you want him to know?

You don't worry about it.

And I just thought, wow, sometimes competition brings out the best in people.

And what an immodeling example for kids who are watching because how many of us feel

like we've gotten screwed over and kind of jipped out of something we worked really hard

for.

When competition is for a greater purpose than the self, like when competition is to glorify

God, to magnify him, you are able to lose with grace because it was never about winning

to begin with.

Was this mutually agreed upon quest for excellence?

Iron Sharpen's iron.

We're going to compete against one another to bring out the best thing.

Can you imagine someone beating you in a 100 meter dash?

And you said, man, I would have liked to have won that.

But wow, your performance was incredible.

You can be highly competitive and still walk across that finish line or run across the

finish line and say, but I'm still amazed by what you did.

And I think it's a very different orientation towards sports and how we think sports

reveals this.

Like, am I in the group that says I'll do anything to win because that's my value or

am I in the group that says I can celebrate the wins of others while also being highly

competitive myself.

But it's not just the character of the athletes that's revealed.

It's also us as spectators, like sometimes I'll watch football with my boys.

And there'll be some controversy we'll call.

And it's interesting how you see it differently depending on the team you're rooting for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, that must be a catch or there's no way that was a catch or he was down or he wasn't

down or that was a hold or no, they've been calling those all game against my team.

Why aren't they calling on your team?

And it's really hard to be objective when you have a rooting interest.

Yeah.

But I think that's part of character is being able to say, you know what?

My team should have gotten that penalty called or we were fortunate in that situation.

We got a break.

Now Keith has the opposite of character because what Keith likes to do is when he knows

that there's a fan of a team, he not only starts rooting for the other team, he will come

to you and say, well, clearly that call was the right call.

And if you disagree, it's because you have some sort of problem inside of your heart

with confeditiveness.

I work with a bunch of people who are big Kansas City chiefs fans.

And while I like the chiefs, they're not like my team.

So I'm a little bit more.

Clearly, you're objective.

I'm a bit more objective.

You think you know what I'm trying to, you know, poke up people a little bit and see

what they were talking about.

Well, I love to poke up people about all kinds of things that's what I live to do.

But, you know, they'll all be depressed because they think that the referees stole a game

from them.

And, you know, I just think it's hard to be objective when you have a rooting interest.

And I'm very objective.

I'm upset when they steal the game, but I'm happy when they give it to us.

So I think that sports, like I said earlier, like a little morality play, it reveals

who you are.

It reveals the character of both spectators and athletes.

So we're talking about ethics.

And that's going to come up here in a second when we talk about sports gambling.

But before we get there, let's just think for a second about how the Bible speaks specifically

of sports.

I mean, sports have been around a long time.

They were part of the ancient world.

So it shouldn't surprise us that the Bible comes along and uses sports as a metaphor or

an example, a pattern for us to apply to our Christian life.

One that might actually have some relevance to the sports gambling discussion is second

Timothy II V.

And this is a passage where Paul talks about people competing in a competition.

And he says that if they don't follow the rules, like if they cheat, then they can't

win.

And he's telling Timothy in your own work as a pastor, as a ministry leader, make sure

that you have a character that abides by God's rules, that abides by God's laws.

Now as we're going to discover with most of these verses, they're not really about sports.

They're usually taking sports and metaphorically applying it to something in the Christian

life.

But it doesn't mean that it doesn't tell us anything about sports.

And in this case, it shows that Paul had a concern with sports being ethical.

If you're going to play a game, if you're going to be involved in a sport, you should

do it by following the rules.

And if you don't follow the rules, then you're going to disqualify yourself.

So bottom line is that I do think the Bible at least implies that when it comes to our

engagement of sports, playing by the rules, playing fairly, playing ethically is important

to God.

Back in the first century, there was something called the It's Me in games.

I can't quite say that word exactly right.

But it was a major biennial sporting event and it was held in Greece near Corinth.

It was something that the Apostle Paul would have definitely known about, maybe even bent

to himself.

He was there for a year and a half.

I mean, odds would be he was there when they happened.

And these games are very pagan, like they were dedicated to Poseidon, who was the God of

the Sea.

With all that as kind of cultural background, it shouldn't surprise us that in first Corinthians,

remember the It's Me in games are right near Corinth and now Paul's writing to this church

and he uses athletic imagery to talk about their faith.

So he says, don't you realize that in a race, everyone runs, but only one person gets

the prize.

So run to win.

All athletes are disciplined in their training.

They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize.

So I run with purpose in every step.

I'm not just shadow boxing.

I discipline my body like an athlete training it to do what it should.

Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others, I might myself be disqualified.

So you hear all the athletic imagery in there and he's of course applying it to our faith.

He's talking about winning a prize and training and delayed gratification.

These are all things that people who are engaged in sports are very familiar with being

single-minded or having like one purpose you're striving after, being self-controlled.

He even talks about the threat of being disqualified.

So Paul uses sports and the culture's love for sports in the first century to say we

should be pursuing Christ with that kind of intensity with that kind of training because

we want to win the crown of righteousness.

Not good for us that anyone who is faithful to Christ can have that crown of righteousness.

There's not just one out there that you're going to get and somebody else isn't.

You'd think of all the energy that you put into sports or athletes put into sports.

You put into washing sports and say, I want to pursue Jesus like they're pursuing a

victory in this game.

Dare I say that perhaps it's glorifying to God when an athlete does practice delayed gratification?

They train hard and they say no to the food they shouldn't eat and they say yes to the

sleep that they need to perform at an excellence level.

When they run hard, not just to the run, but like Paul says, running to win when they're

not just out there punching at the air and shadow boxing, they say no, like we're going

to be invested in actually doing this sport to the utmost.

So I think the other side of this is that there's something good again in sporting and athletics

that we can affirm.

Okay.

Let's get to it, Patrick, and let's talk about sports gambling.

You know, if we lost half of our audience over kids sports last week, we're coming for

the other half this week.

Well, let me give a little background, but before I do, let me just ask you a question.

Why is this such a sensitive topic, do you think it is?

I think it's actually very similar to the kids sports thing in the sense that we're all

happy to talk about ethical decisions that aren't a part of our lives.

In other words, so it's just close to home because we all participate in sports gambling.

The only people who feel offended by the kids sports thing are people who have their

kids in sports, right?

But I think the kids sports thing, your kids are so close to you.

Your identity is often wrapped up in your kids and you love your kids so much and you

want the best for your kids.

And for someone to tell you that you're doing something detrimental to your kids by involving

them and all these sports stuff, pulling them away from church and family and other stuff,

it's just hard to hear that because you love your kids so much.

You can't see yourself as a bad parent.

So I don't like doing anything to hurt their kids.

They're all trying to do their best.

And we might be wrong.

We all are wrong in so many ways, but we're all trying to do our best.

But sports gambling doesn't seem like it should be as sensitive as kids sports because

it's not wrapped up in our parenting and our identity as great parents and our love for

our kids.

I do have a theory here.

Obviously in America and throughout most of Christian history, gambling has been viewed

as a vice.

I'm not necessarily saying that it's a sin.

We're going to get into that conversation, but as a vice, like something that is probably

not wise and good to have be a normal part of your life.

You don't hear about a gambler, I think, gosh, what an upstanding citizen that person

is.

I want my kid to grow up to be a great gambler.

Oh, I hope he's the best gambler.

No one thinks that.

And now that gambling has become much more normalized because of online sports betting,

you're having more people who are now participating in something that historically has been considered

a vice.

And when you are participating in something that is, again, historically considered a vice,

misery loves company.

There's a sense in which the way that I normalize my behavior that I think might be wrong behavior

is by showing that other lots of really good normal people do it.

That will be how I normalize it.

And so the defensiveness that comes in is not merely, I think what I'm doing is right,

but I need to convince you.

Because if you agree with me, then I can be sure that I'm right.

And this is why I think I get caught up into a lot of this is because nobody wants anything

more than a pastor to tell them that their online gambling thing is good.

And then when you're in a friend group of the pastor and he's like, Hey, I'm not sure

about that.

Now all of a sudden, you've made it worse for them because you are reaffirming.

Yes, what you're doing is probably a vice.

And the guy who supposedly knows his Bible is now out here saying, definitely, yes, it

is a vice.

So I think that's like an internal defensiveness that comes out with this.

That's different than the kid's thing is like, I want to justify my behavior.

You're talking about normalizing the behavior of gambling and it moving from a vice to something

that is considered mainstream and normal for most Americans.

Can you imagine like Charles Barkley, just an example, it's like a mainstream public figure

being an advertisements for like Las Vegas Casinos 20 years ago?

Well, no, of course not.

I mean, all the leagues avoided it and they want nothing to do with it.

Celebrities know.

And the reasons they did.

Politicians know.

The reason they didn't want anything to do with it is because they knew it would corrupt

the game.

So they had to stay away from gambling because you have the black sock scandal back in the

early 1900s and it corrupted baseball and so they brought in the new commissioner judge

Landis from Kennesaw, Georgia, I think.

And he came in to clean up the gambling problem in sports.

So it's been around.

Stopped corruption.

It stops teams from throwing games.

It's been around a long time.

It's always been seen as bad.

Leagues wouldn't have teams in Las Vegas and all that because they didn't want anything

to do with the gambling industry because they thought it would corrupt the game.

But all of that changes in 2018.

Yeah.

Things have changed before that with lottery and stuff like that.

But that really changes for sports gambling in 2018 when the Supreme Court rules that it's

unconstitutional for two states in Nevada and New Jersey to be able to do sports gambling

when no one else can.

So sometimes people think the Supreme Court legalized sports gambling.

It did not.

It just removed the barrier and then all these states decided to legalize it.

So right now, 48 states have some form of legalized gambling.

The two exceptions are Hawaii and Utah.

39 states have legalized sports gambling.

I'm sure in the others, it's just a matter of time until they do as well because governments

have come to depend on that money to run the state.

And therefore they need to keep legalizing gambling more and more in order to have the

revenue to pay the stuff they need to do.

It was fascinating when I got legalized here in Missouri, the commercials that went around

trying to convince people to vote for it.

And this goes to the normalization point, you know, they've got Missouri teachers on

these ads saying, you know, how great it's going to be for the state.

But it's always for the kids.

We're always going to use the money for the kids, just to name it like even in the legalization

process, there's the normalization of, hey, it's now virtuous, I guess, to gamble because

you're helping the kids.

But then there's the cultural normalization, which is the celebrative vocation, right?

Like all the celebrities who are on these apps and they're on the ads and it looks so

exciting.

Just the fact that like it's on your TV when you're watching sports, like, you know, typically

the commercials on TV during sports have to be somewhat family friendly.

So if you're going to have draft Kings, look, it can't be that bad.

Well, do you know how they can afford to run all those commercials?

Commercial after commercial after commercial is because they are making a ton of money

off of us, off of the public, off of people who gamble.

Now, here's a thing.

Oh, do you know the numbers?

The numbers for the revenue for online gambling.

So 2019, there's a legal gambling legal.

This is legal online sports.

It's obviously there's a lot of legal online sports betting, okay?

So starting in 2019, when you start having states begin to legalize it, it was $20 billion.

That's how much the end, that's still a very large industry, right?

Last year, it was over $160 billion.

That's one of the largest entertainment.

I think it might now be the largest entertainment industry in the country.

You know when people say follow the money, the gambling industry makes a ton of money off

of people and that's why they can afford the big casinos.

It's why they can afford to pay the celebrities.

It's why they can afford to pay the TV spots.

But here's the thing, if you want to think of gambling from a Christian perspective,

you're not going to be able to just go find some verse that says,

it's always wrong to gamble.

Listen, I don't think you can find that verse.

I think gambling is going to fall into wisdom.

So I think the Bible talks about gambling negatively, but it never says you can never gamble.

We're broader than sports betting.

So let's broaden out and just talk about gambling in general.

It's like gambling could entail conceivably everything from going to your friend's house

and doing a $20 buy-in for a poker night all the way up to going to Las Vegas

and having a $1 million buy-in at a massive competition, right?

Like gambling can be a lot of different things.

I don't know where you're going to come in on this if we're going to agree or not.

And I'm not even sure I can fully defend my view, but I don't think all of that is equally wrong.

I'm not even sure all of it's wrong, but I'm pretty convinced that part of it is wrong.

I think I want to agree with you for one reason.

Gambling has been around for at least 3,000 years.

The earliest extant archaeological example of gambling was from a Mesopotamian culture

3,000 years ago.

They found dice and bones that they were using to gamble.

My point is, gambling existed in the world of the Bible.

So if it was a sin, I kind of assume the Bible is going to say gambling is a sin, but

it doesn't say that?

Not directly.

Not directly.

Now, I think it says some things that should give you pause and make you ask some questions

around gambling, which goes to your point, I don't think it's a sin to go and do the $20

or buy in with your friends to play poker and have an entertaining night.

Because if it was, again, I think the Bible would just come out and say it's a sin.

In other words, there seems to be some sort of category of like, God's like, yeah, paying

for entertainment is not necessarily a problem in and of itself.

And that could be a form of entertainment that you're going to have with your friends.

But maybe we should just get into the biblical principles and apply them.

So if we call gambling a wisdom issue, one of the verses that comes to my mind when I

think about anything that falls into this wisdom category is 1 Corinthians 10, Paul's

writing to the Corinthians.

He says, you say, in other words, this is

what the Corinthian church is saying is what Corinthian culture is saying.

You say, I am allowed to do anything.

And then Paul says, but not everything is good for you.

And then he repeats it, you say, I am allowed to do anything.

And then Paul responds by saying, but not everything is beneficial.

So there are things that are permissible, but not wise, permissible, but not good, permissible,

but not beneficial.

And now we live in a very libertarian moment.

So what I mean by that is that we have this approach that if you're not hurting

anyone, it's okay.

Like the government or no one should tell you can't do something as long as you're not

hurting anyone else.

And so the belief is, well, you're just kind of spending your money to do your thing,

your way.

You want to gamble it.

You want to buy lottery tickets.

You want to bet on sports?

Well, you're not hurting you, buddy.

So you should be able to do it.

I'm not sure that's turning out very well for our society, but you have to understand

that's the context with which sports gambling and all other forms of gambling are on

the rise.

Nothing the kind of conversation I have with people is, oh, there's not a verse in

the Bible.

Ergo.

I can do whatever I want to do.

What's the problem?

Another passage that I've reflected on a lot is Proverbs 13-11.

It's really helpful when you read the Proverbs to imagine the context it gives you, which

is a father talking to his son.

You kind of imagine dad talking to his son and giving this wise word.

So dad says to son, well, from get rich, quick schemes, that quickly disappears.

Well from hard work, that grows over time.

When you imagine it that way, you can imagine what the dad's trying to actually communicate.

He's not telling the son, you should feel really guilty about your gambling or this or

that.

He's saying, hey, a day's coming where you're going to be tempted by a get rich, quick scheme.

It might be gambling.

It might be a lottery.

It might be any number of things.

Just so you know, you're not going to win much.

And you're really young and you're going to want to take a lot of risks, but I've had

a lot of experience.

I'm just telling you, the people who take those risks stand up in the streets.

You want to have wealth for the long term work hard.

When you put in the dad's son context, it becomes really clear what's being said here.

And so we bring that into the present and we start thinking about sports betting, especially

people who are kind of in this like, oh, you know, people literally call it an investment.

I'm going to make money on this or people are like, hey, I got the free money and I'm

making so much.

I'm doing awesome.

That comes along.

He's like, just so you know, son, that get rich, quick schemes.

I can last for a long and you're playing with fire, you're really playing with fire.

The Bible also has other warnings about money and the love of money and the pursuit of

money as being the root of all evil.

And when you think about gambling, what am I trying to do?

Well, I'm trying to win money and that pursuit of money, that love of money gives rise to

all kinds of other sins in my heart.

Now, here's one of the, I'm like, I want you to double down for a second.

You double down.

Well, it's just so easy to move past.

All different forms of entertainment, the reason they work on us or the reason why we find

them entertaining has to do with the thing itself.

And if the thing that's driving me towards gambling is I want more money.

Like it's the money is what makes it fun.

But some of it's the competition, right?

I agree.

So I just like to win.

I like to go study teams.

I like to figure things out.

I agree.

So I'm not saying this is the only thing that's out there.

I'm not trying to minimize, right?

But it's the same thing could be said for me if I'm doing the $20 buying with my friends.

Oh, are you just running after the money?

Now, I don't need that much money.

I'm going to bring home and winnings from a $20 game.

That's not what's motivating me, but it does add stakes and add some competition to

it.

And that's what makes it fun for me.

It's like, oh, like we're all going to try really hard here because we put in a little

bit of fun money.

My point is, if what you're chasing after is the money and what's getting you excited

to go back is I can win a little bit more.

I can have a little bit more.

That's something you should check in your heart.

It's interesting that you put that proverb in context of a father talking to a son because

the people who are most wrapped up in sports betting right now, all kinds of betting really

are men, young men, especially men and their teams, men and their 20s, maybe even early

30s.

It extends beyond that, but those are the ones who are really getting sucked into it.

Can I give you some stats really quick?

Oh, let's hear them.

A quarter of all men in the United States and 12% of women right now bet on sports three

or more times per week.

12% of women?

I know.

Like, to me, it seems low for men and high for women.

This is of all men though, right?

So you've got men from zero to, you know, 15 or whenever they can figure out how to get

onto a sports betting.

I see.

And then you've got, you know, many were too old to figure out how to use a sports betting

at just a quarter.

Here's the one that will also blame your mind and NCAA survey reported that almost 70%

of college students living on campus are currently regularly betting on sports.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all.

I'm around college students and guys in their 20s and that's what they talk about.

Yeah.

And so older men just want to say this really quick.

Remember that when you're out here arguing about this, you never know who's listening

in on that conversation and there might be younger men.

You might not have a problem, which I think we can talk about later, but you are shaping

a culture that it's going to affect younger men and you have to ask yourself the question

of my participating in something that is good.

Can I do it?

Yes.

To Paul's point, but is it beneficial?

Well, I think that idea is something we're going to keep coming back to you.

So let's double down on that to your language.

And that is that when you participate in gambling, sports gambling, you're probably enabling

a system to function that isn't harming you.

Like, there's a really good chance if you're listening to this.

You're fine.

You're able to handle the gambling.

You're able to do it responsibly that you're not chasing after losses, that you're not

betting money that you can't afford to lose to you.

It's probably a form of entertainment, at least now.

Now, I think it can jump the bounds pretty quickly and become a problem.

But I would guess that most people listening to this can handle it and are handling it okay

as of now.

But you're enabling, propping up a system that is taking advantage of a lot of people

in our society.

It's taking advantage of poor people.

It's taking advantage of young men who don't have fully developed brains.

It's taking advantage of people who are isolated and bored and lonely.

And I guess to me, it's become something that I don't want to participate in because

I don't want to participate in a system that takes advantage of my fellow citizens, my

fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

Can I give an analogy?

Yeah.

I was listening to something and someone was saying, hey, like, I'm not a Christian.

So, you know, I don't need to worry about watching pornography, right?

I don't think there's a god he's telling me that it's trying to lust.

Look at porn.

It's like, so make the case for me why I shouldn't watch pornography.

And the person responded with exactly this, they said, well, you need to understand is

that porn is a multi, multi, multi billion dollar business might be bigger than gambling.

I'm not sure.

Probably is.

And the vast majority of those videos that are made are made by taking advantage of women,

by trafficking women, by giving women drugs that they can have the sex and the men as

well in a lot of different cases.

And so they're trying to point out to the person, you might not be doing anything to harm

yourself in your view, right?

You are definitely making a financial incentive for people to go take advantage of and abuse

those who are weak and who are hurting.

And I think that's what you're trying to say is that these companies are making $160

billion off and by capitalizing on the weakest people in our society.

And you are participating.

You are giving them resources.

You are giving them your eyes and your attention.

They're selling you ads.

Even if you say, I'm not putting any money in.

You're still giving them things that they can sell.

You are a part of the system and you just have to wrestle with it.

So one of the things gambling does is it corrupts our society.

I think it corrupts lots of ways.

There's a book called, We're All Losers.

I think that's the name of it.

And it's a book by Washington Post columnist on gambling.

It's a great book if you want to know some of the history and some of the ways that gambling

is affecting us as a culture.

But he tells a story in there about a ESPN reporter named Ian Rappaport and he was covering

the NFL draft and people were betting on who the 49ers were going to take as their

draft pick.

And the betting markets were predicting that they take one quarterback, but he found out

through insight sources because that's what a reporter has, right, on a team.

He has his sources on that team.

He found out it was going to be a different quarterback, a guy named Tray Lance.

So here you have Ian Rappaport.

What should he do?

He has really good reason to believe from insight sources of the 49ers that they're going

to take Tray Lance.

But the betting markets all think it is another quarterback.

So he could have taken that insight information and gone and placed a bet and then reported

it.

And he's like, no, I can't do that.

I can't get corrupted that way.

And so he immediately tweeted out the information that he had.

But you can see that it's going to corrupt people because not everybody is going to make

that same choice or think of Tim Donney, the NBA Raff.

He was convicted for throwing games as a referee because he had placed money on it and he

was being funded by other people who had placed even more money on it.

And they depended on him to make certain calls to affect the outcome of a game.

Or think about the players as corrupted.

I mean, we don't really need to mention all the teams and all the names of the people.

But there are a lot of stories now coming out about how professional and college athletes

are facing jail time because they got sucked up into gambling.

Let me explain real quick what a prop bet is.

A prop bet is not a bet on the outcome of the game.

A prop bet is on the outcome of an individual player's performance.

So let's take basketball.

Let's say you can place a bet on whether a particular player will have more or less than

five rebounds.

And then you're that player and somebody comes along and says, hey, I'll give you a lot

of money if you'll make sure that you do not get five rebounds.

Well, there's lots of ways without player to go out there and play hard and try to help

us team win the game, but just intentionally not get five rebounds.

And then they get a cut off of what the guy made.

So these prop bets have increased the likelihood that individual athletes can corrupt the

game because they are not doing their best because they're trying to make money on the

side.

And you might think, gosh, these athletes have so much money.

Why do they need more money?

Well, remember that the love of money is the root of all evil.

If you love money, you'll never have enough.

That's the Clesiastes five, 10.

And so it's almost like you could never have enough money.

So what we find is more and more athletes are falling into these traps.

So it's corrupting media, it's corrupting officials, it's corrupting the games.

So if you love sports, maybe you should love sports betting.

If you love the thing, why would you want it to be corrupted by something external to

it?

And this is why the leagues wanted to stay so far away from it.

They wanted nothing to do with gambling because they knew that if gambling started getting

into sports, it would ruin the game as again, no team in Las Vegas.

Why?

Because they don't want to be associated with it.

There was even one team in this mentioned in this book where all losers, he had named

the team one NFL team that wouldn't fly over Las Vegas.

They would ask the pilot to redirect the plane so they wouldn't go over Vegas.

They wanted nothing to do with it.

Now they're all in bed with it and they're all getting paid off by the gambling sides.

Okay.

We need to talk about sports betting on apps in particular because that's where the

vast majority of this money, that $160 billion I was talking about, that's where the vast

majority of it's coming from.

And a lot of times when I talk to people about this, they're like, you know, this is nothing

new.

You know, you could go to Vegas, you could go to Jersey, you could go and do sports betting

back then.

You can do it now.

Like, why do you have a big issue with it today?

Like, what's the big difference between that and now people can do it on their phones?

Just giving more access.

So I want to talk about the difference between online sports betting and localized sports

betting.

And let's just start here.

The first thing you need to remember, because where everybody gets started on the sports

betting and people try to get me to it, they go, look, drive games is giving $300 to

any new player.

And it's always the same thing.

And I took the $300 and I'm not going to spend any more money and you know, I haven't

spent any more money and I have made, you know, $1,500.

Why don't you go in?

Because of course they get a little kick back if I go in.

Why don't you go in and you know, you don't have to put any money in.

You can just go.

And I always look at my face.

I said, you are a really smart person.

And Patrick says that to you, you know, you're going to get you set up and say, you

better go high.

I go, do you think that these people running these gambling websites, do you think that they

are experts on betting?

Yeah.

Yeah, they are.

So do you think they would make a $300 bet expecting to lose?

Right.

Well, not me.

If someone is willing to put up $300 to get you onto their app, that is a lot of money

for any company to offer to everybody, right?

It is because they are incredibly confident that you will give them more than $300.

100%.

In fact, quite a bit more than $300.

And it doesn't mean every single person does, but it means the majority do.

The majority do.

The majority do.

And some give a lot more.

Clearly.

But don't worry.

Other people are paying for you.

So I've just saying, like, there's something different.

Because when you walk inside of the average Vegas casino, you know, I don't know that they're

always offering you, you know, $600 on the spot just to walk through the doors once

it's a terrible casino.

What they do out there is they will say that if you are a consistent gambler, if you are

gambling a lot inside the casino, they'll give you a free meal or a discounted hotel room

or something like that.

So they have other incentives to do it.

So I don't know the incentive is the biggest distinction between online and in-person gambling,

but I know there are a lot.

I just don't know if that's the main distinction.

Yeah, that's true.

All I want to say is just when we get into this online betting thing, you know, Paul

warns against having too high of an assessment of yourself in Romans 12, very few alcoholics

became an alcoholic upon their first drink.

You just have to know that.

They probably spent years having a normal relationship with alcohol and then slowly over

time, they couldn't say no to a second glass and then they couldn't say no to a third

glass and then it became every night and then it became a secret.

You don't know whether you're an alcoholic until you're an alcoholic.

So don't go tricking yourself into saying, I'm not going to be a gambling addict.

I'm just telling you, you have no idea.

I think one of the reasons that the screen base versus the localizes so different is because

if you go to Vegas, assuming you don't live there, right?

So if you go to Vegas, you're going probably with some friends, probably for two days or

something and then you're doing your thing and you're going back home, right?

With the screen, it follows you everywhere and they've perfected using that screen to entice

you into it from the colors to the way it's set up and the apps are designed.

They're enticing you into gambling and it's with you all the time.

So when you're bored, you can just turn to it.

When you're lonely, you can turn to it.

When you're depressed, you can turn to it.

Now when you're lonely to press board, you can't go to Vegas and gamble.

So how close it is always to you takes advantage of your negative emotions, of your down periods.

I think that's a huge difference between in person and online because if you're with

some friends and you're all going out to Vegas for a week and that's totally different

than you're isolated and by yourself in your bedroom.

The level of friction is so different, right?

Yeah, that's a good way of saying that.

You've got two states, reservations and river boats.

That's the only way you're going to go off gambling in this kind of pre on my phone

world of gambling.

There is zero friction on your phone.

These apps are designed to be as frictionless as possible.

If you have an addiction, like you call these addiction, like I have a gambling problem,

they can call and connect with every casino in the country and say, do not let this person

in.

So there's actually ways to protect yourself against gambling addictions when it comes

to this localized thing.

So far as I know, there's always another app.

There's no real way to protect yourself as a gambling addict.

I love this quote from a guy who has a gambling addiction.

He says, and how hard it's been for instance, it became legalized.

This goes to the point of like you're participating in a system, just remember, people are being

affected.

Imagine being a gambling addict and always having a slot machine in your pocket, except

you also need that slot machine to stay in touch with friends and family to get jobs,

to contact co-workers for banking and for navigation.

I mean, how does your heart not go out to that person?

People often be like, well, you drink and there's alcoholics.

So you don't stop drinking just because you're alcoholics.

Why does it stop gambling?

Just because there's gambling addicts.

Me drinking doesn't put a drink on their phone.

Sorry, it just doesn't.

Me drinking doesn't put alcohol in their way to much easier than you can avoid your phone.

You are making a choice to participate in something that makes it impossible for gambling

addicts to get outside of the sphere of what's causing them so much harm.

Something you said a second ago made me think of the other thing I read in the World Losers

book.

And that is that the online gambling apps, they prevent people who are really good at

gambling from using their apps.

So what will often happen is a bookmaker will make odds and then they're watching certain

people to see how they will bet and they will adjust the odds based on kind of the professional

gamblers, the people who are really good at it.

There's not many of them, by the way, but they all know who each other are.

And they'll adjust those odds.

Sometimes what they've been doing though is let's say you're a shark.

You're a guy who's really good at it and you go to put $100,000 on a particular team.

They want that information.

Who would you bet on so they can adjust the odds, but they won't accept your bet.

Which is insane that they're able to reject the bets of those people who are good.

They'll watch the patterns because they have access to all the data and they'll watch

the patterns of how you bet.

And if you're really good at what you're doing, what they'll do is they'll cut you off.

They won't let you gamble anymore on their app.

And so what these guys do is they hire people who bet for them and they're called beards.

Like your facial hair, your beard is your representative who goes out there, but they got that figured

out too.

Because they're hiding your face.

Like who are you?

I don't know.

They got a beer now.

Is that what a person?

Yeah.

So I was like, I didn't know why they were calling on that when I was reading the book.

But anyway, they've even now figured out how to keep your beards, your representatives

from betting for you.

So the only people who they allow to keep betting are the people who eventually lose.

You might have a good day.

You might have a good month.

You might have a good year.

You will eventually lose.

They didn't build those big casinos because most people out there winning.

They build them because people lose their shirt.

Let's keep going down the screen route because I think it's really important.

Let me ask you a question, Keith.

Which of these addictions do you think it takes the longest to break?

A pornography addiction, a cigarette addiction, or an alcohol addiction?

Let's say you've had all of them for at least a decade or more.

Stereography, alcohol, or what?

Cigarettes.

I'm going to go with pornography.

You are correct.

I had an idea.

That wouldn't have been my first guess.

I think I would have gone with cigarettes because it's more like chemical addiction.

I see people who smoke a lot, just quit cold turkey.

I've never seen somebody able to quit cold turkey of pornography.

And it's so accessible.

Yeah.

And it's so hidden, so private.

It takes you about six months of sobriety from cigarettes for most people to kind of

kick the habit.

Okay.

They can pretty consistently say no.

It takes anywhere from a year to like out of max a year and a half without alcoholism.

Like if you're sober for a year.

You're over the hump.

You're over the hump.

You're still vulnerable, but you're over the hump.

So pornography is two years.

For two years after you've seen pornography, you're very vulnerable to find that.

Two years of sobriety.

In other words, if you've gone less than two years without looking at pornography, you're

still in an addicted state.

If you have an addiction to go back into the thing and it releases the dopamine in your

brain, it reignites all the pathways that you're trying to get rid of.

Why?

Why is this the case?

Well, obviously sex is a powerful drug.

That's part of it.

But the other element is that screen just by their very nature.

A lot of research on addictions and dopamine have shown this.

Screens are just highly addictive.

So when things are mediated to us by a screen, they have a more addictive quality than they

would otherwise.

So you're more likely to get addicted to pornography, for example, than just become a good old-fashioned

sex addict.

There's something about screens that has an effect on us.

Why do I say this?

Gambling is, according to all the experts, functions the same way as drugs, if functions

the same way as alcohol in terms of how it works in your brain, get addicted to the exact

same way.

Well, now, only of sports betting on a screen, do you realize you have a compounded addiction?

A screen addiction and a gambling addiction?

Not just that.

So if you had the addiction, you can be addicted twice over, which makes it even harder to

get over than it would be normally.

Remember, pornography takes way longer.

More than that, you now have two pathways, two addiction, right?

Like, maybe you are not naturally someone who is going to become a gambling addict, but

because of the screen, it makes you more likely to become a gambling addict.

In other words, you put these two very powerful things together.

And I think we need to realize that when we're talking about the difference between sports

betting on a phone and sports betting in Vegas.

So a few years ago, I had a friend who was gambling a lot of my friends were gambling on

stuff.

And so I started placing bets on NFL games or college football games through him.

And what I found is that a lot of my habits changed.

Like, for example, I would start listening to podcasts that I had no interest in just

to see what their advice was on betting a game, or I would look for articles.

I was thinking about it way too much.

I was watching a game that I bet 25 bucks on, and instead of enjoying the game, I was

just miserable for it.

And I don't know how long it went.

I mean, several months though, and not just like a week or two, right?

And I just thought, my life is getting worse.

What am I doing?

It's not that I had lost a bunch of money because I hadn't.

I probably had lost a little bit, but it was pretty close to even.

But my life is getting progressively worse.

I'm thinking about things I don't care about.

I'm enduring stress.

Now, is there a certain amount of fun to it?

Sure, because you're talking to your friends and your buddies and saying, Hey, what are

you going to do here?

What do you think about this or that?

And so you're winning together, losing together.

There's something, you know, binding about it that I really enjoyed.

But there was also just the sense that my life is not as good as it used to be.

What am I doing to myself?

And so I just said, Hey, don't let me do this anymore.

I need to not do it.

And, you know, probably once a year, some guys will be betting on something and I'll jump

in and bet with them on that.

But otherwise, I've just totally stopped.

And the more I've read about it and the more I've heard, I'm not even sure I should

be doing the tiny, tiny bit that I do now because I'm so kind of grossed out and saddened

by the system that it's created and how it's taking advantage of people.

I'm glad you shared that we're all thinking through this and struggling together.

And I think it'd be really easy for us to kind of come out with a strong stance against

sports betting and it comes across real judgmental.

And we've got it figured out and we know what we're doing.

This is my friends who were doing this.

It wasn't as they sat down and thought, I'm going to have a really, you know, ethical discourse

in my own head about what's right and what's wrong.

It just felt like, Oh, this is, I do others have on my phone.

I'm not losing any money.

I don't have a problem with gambling necessarily.

Like, I don't think most people get into this because they're bad people.

They're doing really bad things.

What we're trying to do right now is, I think, pull back the curtain and say, like, Hey,

but if we stop and we do start thinking about it, what are the costs?

I don't know what I think about this.

I'm still in process.

But I think there's a lot of people, probably that you and I are friends with, normal guys

out there who are involved in sports betting as a form of entertainment.

Like you might go to the show, you might go get season tickets to a sporting event, you

might go out to dinner, you might go on a vacation.

That's all of my friends at your sports betting.

But it's not just our friends again.

We're not talking about our friends.

We're talking about just people.

And I think they're handling it very responsibly.

They're using it as a way to build friendships and guys like to do things together.

They're not going to sit around and talk.

So the doing thing together is talking about sports and gambling and all that.

And there's a lot of harmlessness to it.

In fact, there could even be really good things about it.

So I'm not going to end up this saying gambling is all wrong and you shouldn't do it.

And here's what the Bible says.

And I'm a better person because I'm not doing it.

That's just not where I am on the issue.

I think you can gamble responsibly just like you can drink alcohol responsibly.

And I also think that it corrupts.

However, there's also the system.

What you have to wrestle with is you're enabling and propping up and participating in a system

that takes advantage of a lot of people.

That's where I've grown uncomfortable.

But I think people can think that through and come to different conclusions.

I don't think you're on the same page with me.

I think we might be a little bit different.

I think I agree with you in the broad principle about gambling in general.

But this goes back to what we said at the beginning.

Like context really matters.

The motivation is the heart matter.

When we start talking about online sports betting, the like on the phone stuff,

that's where I start saying.

But is that because it's a different moral question?

Or is that because it's taking advantage of people?

Or is it morality change because it's online sports?

I think framing as a moral question can be a little bit distracting.

I think what I would say is number one, it is a system and I have to just ask the question

in my participating in something that's just and good.

God cares about justice.

So that is a moral question.

And McLare, I don't have draft Kings, Fandall, none of that.

I have zero, zero, zero of that.

I don't participate in any of that.

You don't think it's taking advantage of people in poverty, people who don't have money

to give.

It's taking advantage of people.

I think it's for sure it's taking advantage of that.

But I think you could also say businesses, the stock market, you could say other things

take advantage of people.

Yeah.

So I just want to use the same measuring stake across the board.

For me, like the bottom line is, yes, businesses can't take advantage of people.

True.

If there was a business whose entire business model was framed around taking advantage

of people, I started having more deep questions.

I think that's fair.

Sure.

I think I think I'm just making a product that's helping people.

And when you're making 160 billion dollars off of people losing, I'm just saying,

there's 160 billion profit or there's 160 billion dollars, you're back.

You know what, I need to look at this.

I just want to say my understanding was that was in revenue.

But obviously, the gambling platforms are making a ton of money, obviously.

Yeah.

Huge.

So that's one reason I have it.

I do think there's a justice question.

I think that's the right question.

I have a separate question, which is the wisdom question.

This is not morality.

And this goes back to the dad talking to the son and saying to what degree are you playing

with fire, Mr. Responsible?

The responsible person right now, I will not buy into the idea that that person, because

the responsible right now will remain responsible.

Okay.

But let's take that and take it to alcohol because you can find proverbs that have warnings

about alcohol.

Yeah.

Right?

No, we would say alcohol, create a good, has a fall, can be use redemptively or sinfully,

can be healthy or can be damaging.

We'd say all those things.

Can you say the same thing about gambling?

I don't know, but I'm curious.

This is one of the pushbacks I'm going to be like, well, you know, you drink.

So people get addicted to drinking, what's your problem?

My first thing to say is this, the Bible doesn't say anything explicitly about gambling.

Doesn't say gambling is a sin, doesn't say gambling is good.

Let's talk about wine.

The Bible says getting drunk is a sin.

The Bible also says that God gave wine to make the heart of man glad.

So the Bible has something good to say about alcohol.

In other words, Jesus says that he's not going to drink wine again until the day that

the kingdom comes.

He tells us, hey, when we're all resurrected, we're having a wine party and it's going

to be the best wine you've ever.

The Bible has so much positive to say about alcohol and wine, counterbalance by the negatives

as well.

Right?

It has nothing positive to say about gambling.

And so from like this kind of what we've said before, like creation, fall redemption, restoration,

gambling doesn't seem to have that storyline.

I don't know whether or not there's gambling in the Garden of Eden.

I don't think there's probably going to be gambling in the restoration.

I really don't know, but you can see my point here, which is you can affirm alcohol from

the Bible.

You cannot affirm gambling.

I just want to push back one thing, because I agree with everything you're saying,

100%.

I resisted back then.

But I'm just exploring a little bit more.

A little bit more.

Like Kudah said, gambling makes the heart of man glad to go have some fun, but don't

spend too much.

Yes.

I agree.

And I think I really do agree with you, which is why I've decided I don't want to participate

in it.

But you could say competition, because in our last episode that we were having a conversation

about sports, right?

The competition is good and that competition is in the Garden of Eden.

We'll be in the time of the restoration of the new heavens and new earth.

So is gambling a form of competition that can be good or bad depending on how you

participate in it?

I don't know.

And maybe there's no way to answer that question.

I think going to the competition thing, you know, you're competing against other people

in terms of their betting on X, your betting on Y, and that's how you win or lose.

Is a component of gambling?

Yeah, that's fair.

I think we can come to a place of affirming some kinds of competition, but the Bible isn't

out there saying, competition's the best.

So like, I just want to find like, what's the thing?

Give me one thing about gambling that you can find a verse that says like, hey, like that

part of it, even though it's not talking about gambling, like that part is good.

I mean, maybe it's like fun and entertainment.

The best part in me, because there's a lot of bad things about it, but it's not the

money part.

But the best part in me is it's part of just the friendship group.

Now, could we talk about something else?

Yes.

But guys aren't going to give you the other and talk about novels.

I want to be a part of that group.

If you're out there and you want to hang out and talk about novels, Patrick and I are

happy to join it.

But a lot of times, guys are going to talk about sports and the gambling is part of it.

And that's kind of fun.

But I've figured out how to have the fun and participate in it, the conversation without

participating in the gambling.

I've already slightly mentioned this, but you just have to realize these gambling apps.

Jonathan Heitz now writing about this.

He's one of the best thinkers on technology phones, apps.

The apps are designed by behavioral psychologists to keep you addicted, which shouldn't shock people

we've talked about this in the past.

But I want to get people's heads around this.

I want you to imagine if you've ever been in a casino, walking into a casino, the minute

you walk through the doors, it scans your face and knows who you are.

It knows precisely.

I think it does this.

I think it does.

Yeah, I probably do have it.

It can't be sure they do this.

I'm for sure today.

I think it kicked you out of your cheater, all those things.

It scans your face.

It knows who you are.

And then this is the key part.

It knows the tables where you're most likely to lose money, where you're most likely to

bet the most.

It knows the slot machines that are most likely to give advantage of you.

It knows everything about your betting habits, right?

And then it does something crazy.

The entire building begins to shift and move.

I know where you're going with this now, and it's apt.

And as you walk in, the things that are most dangerous for you are not just the things

that you see first.

They're the only things that are accessible to you.

The rooms, the places where you could go to have fun with your friends and not lose a

ton of money, you can't access them anymore.

They're not available to you.

But the places where you experience the worst forms of temptation, the worst use of your

resources, those have now become active in life to you.

That's how these apps operate and work.

They are designed to follow your behavior and cause you to lose money because that's

in the best interest of the apps.

Now again, someone's going to say, well, I can navigate to this and that and find it.

And sure, in some cases, you can't, although as you already pointed out, they will take

features off.

They just won't let you do it anymore.

But I like what you're saying because on the other side of that screen are a lot of

really smart people who spend a lot of money who know your behavior and figured out a

way to get you to do things that are to their advantage in your disadvantage and to get

a little bit specific about this.

The bets with the worst odds for you are parles.

So a parlay is like the chiefs win and the 49ers win.

You know, they're in different games, obviously, and they both win.

So that's a two game parlay.

You can stack those up.

So that the chiefs win, the 49ers win, the Mizzou basketball team wins or whoever, North

Carolina wins.

And so the more parlay you put together, the more teams that you put together in your

parlay, the bigger the payout.

But those have worse odds.

But even worse odds than that are in game parlay.

So Patrick Mahomes, photos for 300 yards, Travis Kelsey catches a touchdown and the chiefs

win.

Well, people love to bet on their teams and they love to put those parlayes together

because they have a big payout.

But the casinos give the worst odds to those.

So if you win, you win a lot of money, but chances of you winning are very, very slim.

And they push those to teenage boys, guys in their 20s because that's where the casinos

will make their most money.

So it's like what you're saying, the spinning room that they put the things that are worse

for you in front of you.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You said teens, a 2023 study.

So this is years ago now.

So I'm guessing that it's worse now than it was then found that 19% of online bettors

between the age of 18 to 24 had a gambling addiction.

That's a pretty high number.

I would guess that if you'd looked at the amount of people between the ages of 18 to 24

who are drinking alcohol, how many of them are alcoholics and be a much lower percentage,

then that much again goes to my whole like, let's not compare apples to oranges.

All this to be said, we can move on past this as far as the screens go.

These apps and their proprietors are working so hard to normalize a vice.

I'm not saying a sin.

Advice is just something like, yeah, it's probably not the best thing for you, right?

And they've done a fantastic job.

They're designed by behavioral psychologists.

They create a room for you to lose.

They are playing with fire because the screens are addictive.

Foreign addictions take way longer than cigarette addictions.

Gambling addictions really hard when you put it together with screens even worse.

We know that the people who are being taken the most advantage of our young people and

poor people would just put all this together.

This doesn't mean I'm against gambling.

I just say, are those companies I want my resources, my time, my energy and bet with?

And whether or not I haven't called it a sin.

I don't know that I would call it a sin.

I've just come to the conclusion that it's not something I want to get near with a 10-foot

pole or a 20-foot pole or an any-length pole.

I think that's a good place to end.

I hope you enjoyed the two-part conversation that we had on sports.

If this is the only one you've listened to, go back and listen to the first one.

I think there'll be a lot of good stuff there that sets up this conversation.

But we will be back next week talking about what, Patrick.

We still got a few more of these episodes left.

But we thought it'd be fun to do a little bit of a grab bag next week so rather than

talking about one thing, we're going to hit it a few things.

So I think we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about travel and vacation.

Can't wait till you tell us about your vacations.

Yeah, tell you all about my amazing vacations.

No, I'm actually really excited because I did a little dive on the history of vacations

and it was fascinating.

It was like, oh, this is where our ideas about vacation came from.

There's things I just would have never thought, it was like, maybe it's just me.

So a few other topics in there that I think will be really interesting to you.

And then we still have social media as an episode and then we'll talk about food and

drink as an episode.

Oh, that would be great.

Good book discussion.

So all that's coming up in the future.

Get trust and start reading trust.

I promise you you'll like it.

But you don't really know what the book is about until at least part two or part three.

So just stick with it.

You'll love it.

All right.

Check you later.

Bye.

Thanks for listening to today's episode.

If you want to quit part time Christianity, your journey doesn't need to stop here.

Make sure to subscribe to our not just Sunday newsletter.

You'll get insightful encouragement and challenges to grow in your faith.

If you're looking for something daily, check out our devotional podcast, 10 Minute Bible

Talks.

You might be surprised what 10 minutes in God's word every day does to your life.

Lastly, if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend.

That helps get word out about the podcast and it might even change somebody's life.

And of course, leave a rating and a review on whatever podcast player you use.

That lets people know that God just might do something special and their lies if they

listen along.

Thanks.

See you soon.