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This shocked me the other day. Remember that Mega Millions prize a couple of weeks ago for hundreds of millions of dollars? Well, this article over at the International Business Times sheds a dark light (ooh, oxymoron) on the situation. And here’s the sentence that made me stop in my tracks:
…poor people in the U.S. – those earning $13,000 or less – spend an astounding 9 percent of their income on lottery tickets.
Hang on, 9 percent?! That’s ridiculous! You don’t have to work for an accounting firm to know that at least 99.9% of those people would be far better off just by cutting out the lottery from their budget, so why, how does that even happen?
Well, it’s called addiction, or more often in Scripture slavery, and John Piper over at Desiring God has responded to the situation in his typical way. There’s really good stuff there, but the final sentence probably sums it up in a good, hard-hitting way:
So, if you win, don’t tithe your lottery winnings to our church. Christ does not build his church on the backs of the poor. Pray that Christ’s people will be so satisfied in him that they will be freed from the greed that makes us crave to get rich.
