Playing the lottery

A week ago the Powerball went for something near $1.5 billion and, as seems to always be the case when the jackpot gets so large, people started talking and stores started selling tickets like bananas. People even lined up in some places for an hour or more to get Powerball tickets (not, of course, in Kittson county, where we tend to take our business elsewhere if there’s a line of more than two people). Also, as becomes more likely when millions of tickets are sold, somebody won the jackpot—three somebodies, from what I understand—and we can all return to our lives as normal with the exception of the occasional story of somebody blowing their life’s savings on lottery tickets or whatever.

I have to start by saying I’m pretty strongly against the lottery. Numerous studies have shown that it essentially amounts to a regressive tax on the poor, since areas that tend to sell the most tickets tend to be the poorer places in the United States. But beyond that there is something human about this desire we have in playing the lottery. As long as there’s a chance, we’ll take enormous risks on the possibility of payoff. For most people buying a $2 lottery ticket isn’t an enormous risk; it’s a small one with a big possibility of payoff, but it is that possibility, however remote, that captures us.

            Once captured, some people have within them a beast that will never be fed and they will become addicted. Not everybody, relatively few really, but far more than those who win. For every lottery jackpot winner there are a million or more people addicted to gambling. That doesn’t mean it’s universally bad, just that there’s always this side effect that we’re party to whenever we partake, whether it affects us directly or not.

            This is a human nature problem. What seems harmless, inexpensive and fun, will become something more devilish for some people some of the time. This is true about the lottery but it’s pretty universal to other areas of life. Say there’s a person with whom you are infatuated. You work up your courage and take the chance, finally, and confess you really like this person. There’s a chance they like you back, and a chance they don’t. This is life and love. And it’s messy. You might hit the jackpot or you might go away brokenhearted. But there are worse things than being brokenhearted, tough though it may be. Worse is becoming addicted to that infatuation. Worse is giving up on a relationship and instead seeking only the baser biology that drives it—sex only, not love.

            We are created to take chances. We have a God who gave us this potential to be something grand, but potential is also our weakness. Our brokenness is deep. What may be harmless for most is not harmless for all, and whether it’s the lottery, sex, alcohol, drugs, or even more banal things like sports or TV or social media our freedom sometimes leaves us captive. Unlimited freedom is a trap. We are created not to be completely free, or else God would have told Adam and Eve not only that they could eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but that they should! Instead we are created to become bound to the things that matter.

            These things are the virtues that Jesus lays out in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, and those who are defamed. These are the things for which we should strive. These are the areas of ourselves to invest in. Meekness, mercy, purity, striving for peace. They  don’t seem like they are contrary to playing the lottery, and that’s exactly the danger. When we drift through life making choices not explicitly bad, but not good either, we gradually become bound to things that will hurt us and others. We were created for more than that.

            So I’m not saying “Don’t play the lottery.” Rather, don’t let your freedom make a fool of you. The odds aren’t in your favor—and in more ways than one. Invest in virtues that pay off in other ways. You won’t win a billion dollars, but your life may well be better off than if you had.