Church In The Shadow Series

A person does not need a degree in the study of human behavior to know that gambling can be addictive and can destroy a home and a person’s life. For decades, there were laws that prohibited gambling. It is questionable, and a cause of considerable debate whether the state should approve gambling. Once a state or two did approve it, the politicians in other states were bribed, or bought off by the lure of being elected and the cancer spread to other states. Then, the question came, why shouldn’t the state not only regulate gambling but participate in it. The carrot that was dangled in front of the electorate was that of finding easy way of funding schools. The legislators of the various states sponsored and approved legislation that makes all of us participants in a gigantic gambling enterprise, with seductive advertising preying on the weak in our society. The latest ads I heard on radio used voices like those of memory of Luci and Desi Arnez to sell lotto tickets.

City after city and state after state are being seduced by the financial gains to be made by introducing gambling, Las Vegas style adult entertainment and the like. And of course the decline in morality on the level of government doesn’t end with preying on those who can be seduced into gambling away their money. The question of legalizing prostitution inevitably follows the question of legalizing casinos. Newport Kentucky is not so many miles away from Indianapolis. Those moral battles were fought in Northern Ky and Southern Ohio within my memory. Christians rallied to the battle and for a generation, evil was restrained: the casinos and pleasure palaces in Northern Ky. were shut down. But this is a new day, and the battles will have to be fought again in this generation.

What about the issue of marriage? Who would have thought in the relatively innocent 1950’s that there could be a legal question about who would be proper candidates for marriage? The question back then was age. How old must one be to be married? Most people and most leaders thought it outrageous that a young teen could be married in a certain southern state. What of divorce? Should divorce be granted was a question in the 1950’s; and if a divorce can be granted, on what grounds? The stability of the family and protection of children was important to legislators and judges back then.

Now divorce is easy. A recent joking throw-away line by a female comic was her reference to her first marriage as her "starter husband." Once again, a free wheeling state was free to encourage not only a gambling industry, but a marriage industry. Divorces and marriages were easily obtained in a Western city. Legalized prostitution was advertised across our country, and the cancer has spread to other states.

In our day, the question is, who are candidates for marriage? Why limit marriage to a male and a female, or even to human beings? Why not explore other possibilities? And so a few states have begun to change the rules and that cancer will spread. But it isn’t enough that the seduction came from the world and power hungry political types. . . . the world has like Balak in his attempt to bring down Israel, has to drag in a witch doctor, a Balaam to bless the procedings. Sure enough, there are bishops and other clergy who not only break out of the old restrictive Christian mold and participate in the revelry, but are there to offer prayers and blessings giving an air of respectability to the new found freedoms.