Is gambling a sin?

Is gambling a sin? Some people might be surprised that that is even a question. Historically, gambling has been seen as one of the archetypal sins, part of a lifestyle made up of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll.

But the Bible says relatively little about gambling specifically. Although there are a number of references to the casting of lots, this is normally in reference to trying to discern God’s will (such as when Jonah is selected to be thrown overboard, or when Matthias is chosen as the replacement for Judas as the twelfth disciple). The only example in the Bible which comes closer to what we might think of as gambling comes when the Roman soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothing at the cross.

This need not mean a great deal in and of itself. There are many things which the Bible does not specifically mention, often because they were less relevant within the world of the Ancient Near East, or in some cases, not invented yet!

At CARE, we work on a wide range of topics. Some of those the Bible specifically gives guidance on, such as the importance of marriage. On others, such as Artificial Intelligence, we can’t expect clear instructions, but we can look at the Biblical principles by which to think about it (such as what the Bible says about humanity, or technology, or eschatology).

With gambling, it is similar: we can look for general Bible principles to work out what we are to think, such as about how we steward money. Or we can look at other behaviours which often accompany gambling (such as greed).

Christians have generally opposed gambling. Clement of Alexandria (writing around the turn of the 3rd century AD) connected it with laziness; Tertullian declared it could put men into a frenzy. And an anonymous early Christian tract called the De Aleatoribus speaks vehemently against Christians who play dice: “If you say you are a Christian when you are a dice-player, you say you are what you are not, for you are a partner with the world.”

So why is it that Christians have generally taken such a negative view? And is that view right? Here are three principles to work through which might guide your thinking.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1)

When humans are created by God in Genesis 1, he gives them authority over the rest of the earth, to “cultivate and subdue it”. In other words, humans do genuinely have authority. But this authority is given to us, and is to resemble the rule of the God in whose image we are made, bringing order, beauty and goodness out of chaos and cacophony. These verses, often known as the Creation or Cultural Mandate, provide the Biblical backing for the cultivation of society, and are at the root of every human sphere, from the arts to commerce and trade.

It is a foundational Christian principle that everything which it might seem we possess - our money, our land, our time, and our skills - is a gift from the God who created and sustains the world, and are also to be used for God too. It is he who is the ultimate owner, and any claims of ownership we might make (which are real: the Bible does provide principles for private property) have limits. God will one day hold us to account as to how we used them.

This is perhaps best demonstrated in Jesus’ Parable of the Talents. Jesus tells a story about a master who dispenses bags of gold to his servants: five to one, two to another, and one to a third. The first two use the gold to acquire more. The master replies: “You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25 The third servant buries his bag in the ground; the master reprimands him for having not even invested it in a bank so that it would gain interest, and orders the servant to be thrown outside.

Christians believe that one day we will have to give an account for how we use the gifts we have been given. When Jesus tells a story about a master giving servants responsibility in Luke, he finishes with the statement: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48).

Gambling generally does not represent good stewardship of God’s gifts to us. 58% of those gambling say that ‘to make money’ was a common motivation for their gambling. But for the gambling companies to make a profit (and boy, do they make a profit; in 2024, the figure stood at £15.6 billion in the UK), people have to lose. The vast majority of bets are unsuccessful, and even if a gambler wins, they are then often enticed to gamble away the profit they have just won (such as through promotional offers). More than 420,000 people lose more than £2,000 every year through gambling in the UK.

This is not seeking to be legalistic; there may be circumstances (and here, Christian consciences may vary) where people are comfortable making relatively small bets for other reasons; think for example, of buying raffle tickets for the local charity, or the office sweepstake during the World Cup, where you might put in £1 for a laugh with your colleagues as the action unfolds and your teams are gradually knocked out.

Others may feel like their conscience allows them to buy the occasional lottery ticket after a triple rollover, for some fun. As Christians, we are allowed to enjoy God’s good gifts to us. In Eden, God “made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food” (Genesis 1:9); God’s creation, and his gifts to us, are to be enjoyed! We spend money on other experiences, such as trips to the theatre, or meals out, or holidays. But all of these should be done in moderation (and are never seen as a financial investment).

Although there can be reasons why Christians might occasionally make a relatively small bet, we should not do so for financial reasons (and the exceptions should be both limited and rare). Gambling does not represent good stewardship of the gifts God has given us.

Paul writes in 1 Timothy 6:10: “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

His words could easily apply to the gambling industry. For it is difficult to see what good is produced by gambling.

For those who are chasing after money, it can very easily turn into greed. We read in Hebrews 13:5: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”” Although there is nothing inherently wrong with wealth, the desire to attain can so easily be representative of something wrong within our own hearts, and reflective of our own consumerist culture, which desires a bigger house, a better-paid job or a nicer car (to give but a few examples).

Others will find that gambling encourages a blase attitude to money, where people take risks they never would normally, and at the expense of those around them. A 2023 survey of people gambling between the ages of 18 and 24 found that 42% said they had taken financial risks in betting; 36% said they had either borrowed money or sold possessions to fund their bet.

The Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon once observed: “When a man takes to the gaming table, it seems as if his whole soul ran out at the sluice, and his entire life is just nothing to him. Wife, children, substance – all must go at the throw of the dice or be staked at the running of a horse.”

Gambling can so often lead to being consumed by selfishness; the risking of money we do not have, or which would negatively impact our family. Around 1.6 million children in the UK currently live in a household where an adult is experiencing direct gambling harm, according to GambleAware’s 2024 Treatment and Support Survey.

And, when it turns out that we are actually losing, it can lead to pride (and a determination to claw one’s losses back, with the inevitable results) and even to deception: shame can so easily become dishonesty, and openness, intimacy and trust (such as with a spouse or partner) can become eroded.

Take the tragic story of Luke Ashton. He was drawn into gambling, and accumulated debts of £18,000. He told his wife Annie that he was trying to get enough money back to pay back his loans. He eventually managed, with Annie’s support, to clear his debts. But eventually he was lured back into gambling by ‘free bet bonuses’. He took his own life in April 2021. Examination of his betting records showed that by the time he died, he was gambling up to 100 times every day, including early in the morning and late at night when his wife was in bed.

Jesus came to set people free: free from the presence of sin, free from the power of sin, and free from the punishment for sin. He said in John 8: “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

Addiction is not what God wants from us as Christians. Some people might argue that freedom can mean that a Christian has the ability to choose to gamble; on one level, that is true. But as Paul wrote to the Corinthians (who had been using their new-found freedom as a license to justify all sorts of misdeeds), “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

The end of that quote feels particularly significant: Christians are not to be mastered by anything. And that is what gambling can so easily become: a master. Jesus once warned: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

And if gambling becomes our master, it means that we become its slaves, unable to escape its clutches, trapped in a vicious cycle of disappointed hopes and desperate attempts to claw our way back. The hustler Danny McGoorty once said: “One of the worst things that can happen to you in life is to win a bet on a horse at an early age.”

Currently, about 2.5% of the UK adult population experience gambling harms – over 1.5 million people. 1.4% of those aged 16 to 24 are now classified as problem gamblers, up from 0.4% in 2023. Perhaps the most telling statistic of all is this: approximately 86% of gambling companies’ profits is collected from just 5% of accounts.

Paul graphically described the struggle with sin in Romans 7: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

But this is not the life with God wants us to live: in Romans 8, he talks about how Christians are no longer those who live according to the flesh, which leads to death, but those who live according to God’s Holy Spirit, which leads to life. “Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” We are not to set our mind on fleshly desires or the things of this world; we are not to be slaves to sin. We are to be sons.

So is gambling a sin? It is true that the Bible does not directly talk about it. But the general principles which the Bible lays out - around how we steward our resources, about other traits we are told to avoid, and around addiction - clearly point in one direction.

While there may be very particular exceptions to that (as ever, as Christians we want to follow the spirit of the law, rather than legalistically holding to the absolute letter of the law), they are just that: exceptions, undertaken in a limited, controlled, reasoned way, which will not lead to greed, selfishness or addiction, or the tossing away of money.

Too often, we look to the Bible for a clear ‘thou shalt not’; we want to see how much we can get away with. But sin isn’t just about breaking the rules. In Romans 3, Paul writes, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. Sin is also about falling short of God’s glory, about not truly reflecting His image in the way we were created to do.

Perhaps we should think about the question the other way round: if, instead of looking for a direct prohibition, we thought about whether gambling was a good way to use our money, and whether it would please and glorify our God, then, I suspect the answer would be pretty clear.