Why Casinos Always Win in the End

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | We are joined once more by Dr. Vern Poitras.

00:00:07.400 | He has degrees from Cambridge and Harvard and Caltech

00:00:11.240 | and of course Westminster Theological Seminary

00:00:13.440 | where you now live and work.

00:00:16.040 | He's a genius, a New Testament scholar, a mathematician,

00:00:18.920 | a man who can talk with authority

00:00:20.360 | on just about any topic under the sun

00:00:23.040 | and we're talking about your book,

00:00:24.280 | "Chance and the Sovereignty of God,

00:00:26.680 | "a God-centered approach to probability

00:00:28.660 | "in random events," which was published in 2014.

00:00:33.240 | At the end of this episode,

00:00:34.360 | I'll tell you how to get the book for free online.

00:00:37.520 | Yesterday we talked about coin tosses

00:00:39.240 | and today I want you to explain,

00:00:40.640 | without going into too much of the detail,

00:00:42.800 | just why are casinos confident of making a profit

00:00:47.360 | off of the gambling industry?

00:00:49.120 | You explain the math in your book,

00:00:51.500 | but for us here in like five minutes,

00:00:53.260 | can you explain why casinos don't lose money in the end?

00:00:56.840 | - Oh, right, well, they make sure.

00:00:59.200 | (laughs)

00:01:00.400 | They wouldn't stay in business otherwise,

00:01:03.480 | but God has put in place in this world,

00:01:06.780 | in his governance of the world,

00:01:08.720 | regularities even with respect

00:01:11.040 | to what we call chance events,

00:01:12.840 | events that we cannot predict.

00:01:14.800 | The thing of the shuffling of cards

00:01:19.360 | or if you've got a roulette table

00:01:22.200 | where there's a ball running around,

00:01:24.800 | God is in charge of all that.

00:01:27.960 | And part of the marvel of it,

00:01:30.440 | if we can separate it from some of the moral evils

00:01:34.640 | that crop up in gambling,

00:01:36.480 | part of the marvel of it is that there's regularities

00:01:40.000 | and faithfulness and such wonderful consistency,

00:01:43.400 | even in this area of so-called chance events,

00:01:47.040 | events that we cannot predict,

00:01:49.040 | but you see the regularities.

00:01:51.100 | If for instance, you flip a coin a thousand times,

00:01:55.260 | roughly 500 of them are gonna be heads.

00:01:57.900 | Why is that?

00:01:59.340 | It's an expression of the wisdom of God

00:02:01.660 | and the faithfulness of God

00:02:03.100 | in a very specialized and small area.

00:02:07.260 | Well, the casinos and the lottery situation,

00:02:10.500 | they are actually the people,

00:02:12.300 | there are experts now who know about these regularities,

00:02:16.180 | they've studied them and they make sure

00:02:19.740 | that they're depending on those regularities.

00:02:21.860 | They're depending on God,

00:02:23.520 | even if there is moral corruption

00:02:26.540 | by the people who use them,

00:02:27.900 | they're depending on those

00:02:29.540 | and they know that certain numbers

00:02:32.700 | are only gonna come up so much a percent of the time.

00:02:36.420 | So when they promise a payment, it'll be a little less,

00:02:40.020 | they'll take a little cut out of that.

00:02:41.780 | On the average, the excitement for the gambler is,

00:02:45.260 | maybe I can win a bundle and you might,

00:02:48.060 | because we can't make those predictions.

00:02:51.580 | But if you make a bundle and you go back the next day

00:02:54.700 | and try to make another bundle,

00:02:56.020 | you'll probably lose it all back

00:02:57.820 | because in the long run,

00:02:59.160 | and this is the thing of God's regularity,

00:03:01.660 | in the long run, things average out.

00:03:03.860 | And as I say, in these casinos and setups like that,

00:03:08.860 | the house, the owner is taking a small percentage.

00:03:14.060 | He wants to make it interesting, right?

00:03:16.300 | And he wants people to be there

00:03:18.340 | who have the excitement of sometimes winning,

00:03:21.040 | but he's taking a small percentage out

00:03:23.780 | with a roulette wheel, American roulette wheel,

00:03:26.620 | there's a zero and a double zero

00:03:28.220 | in addition to 36 numbers.

00:03:29.860 | Now that's getting into the details,

00:03:31.460 | but if the ball falls on those two numbers,

00:03:35.220 | then you lose even bets.

00:03:38.500 | You can bet for odd, you can bet for even

00:03:40.900 | and zero and zero, zero, you lose.

00:03:44.140 | So that's the little percentage.

00:03:46.140 | It's about one out of 18.

00:03:48.580 | One out of 18 times,

00:03:50.380 | you're not gonna break even on the average.

00:03:55.020 | So that little bit is enough for the casino

00:03:58.100 | to make its amount.

00:04:00.940 | The fact is that most people who are gamblers

00:04:04.060 | don't think in terms of those things.

00:04:05.880 | They think in terms of getting a break

00:04:08.540 | and it's as if they're worshiping lady luck.

00:04:12.140 | So again, the issue of idolatry

00:04:14.180 | is there in the background.

00:04:15.700 | They think I can beat the odds

00:04:18.020 | because I'm special or something that I will do

00:04:22.700 | will give me a blessing,

00:04:24.460 | but they ought to be looking to God for a blessing.

00:04:27.500 | - Yeah, and we'll get to the ethics of gambling

00:04:29.340 | in just a moment, but I mean, this point is so huge.

00:04:31.460 | We need to camp here for a minute

00:04:32.860 | because what you're saying

00:04:34.380 | is that God equally governs chance events

00:04:37.860 | and he rules over regularities

00:04:40.340 | and he does both of these things at the same time.

00:04:42.660 | I mean, this is mind-bending

00:04:44.580 | because I think even many good Calvinists

00:04:47.140 | would tend to assume that the 500/500 split

00:04:50.260 | on coin tosses, heads and tails

00:04:51.940 | is purely random naturalism.

00:04:55.020 | But you're saying that divine law

00:04:56.880 | is what makes that predictability a reality.

00:05:00.740 | Unpack this for us more.

00:05:02.360 | - Yeah, it's because he's the God who is the creator,

00:05:07.700 | who's the innovator.

00:05:08.820 | So anything that is new, right, he's behind it.

00:05:13.180 | That's the element of the novelty and the unpredictability.

00:05:17.180 | And he's also a God of faithfulness

00:05:19.860 | who maintains the world in its place.

00:05:22.780 | And the thing with the coins is just as a simple example,

00:05:26.260 | but it's related to the issue of weather.

00:05:29.420 | And there's a number of passages in scripture

00:05:32.100 | that make it clear that God brings the snow and the rain

00:05:36.500 | and sometimes a famine because there is no rain

00:05:40.580 | in a agricultural country.

00:05:42.940 | God is in charge of all those things.

00:05:44.620 | But if you think of the snow,

00:05:46.660 | it's each individual snowflake contributing to the snow

00:05:50.340 | or it's each individual raindrop contributing to the rain.

00:05:53.820 | So there is a combination of this creativity.

00:05:56.720 | You don't know where each individual raindrop

00:05:59.580 | is gonna fall and of regularity,

00:06:02.380 | you know that there's gonna be rain.

00:06:05.380 | And God is clearly showing in the scripture

00:06:09.460 | that he is to be thanked for the coming of rain

00:06:12.340 | with its combination of predictability

00:06:15.940 | and unpredictability.

00:06:17.020 | We can predict the seasons and that's promised by God

00:06:20.020 | in Genesis 8, right after the flood,

00:06:23.300 | he says, "See the summer and winter

00:06:25.300 | and see diamond harvest will not fail

00:06:27.060 | as long as the earth remains."

00:06:28.660 | That's God there.

00:06:30.460 | And we think of weather.

00:06:31.740 | Yeah, I know we live in an environment, you know,

00:06:33.900 | where people pretend that God is absent, right?

00:06:37.060 | So weather is just weather.

00:06:38.220 | No, it isn't.

00:06:39.060 | It's God bringing the weather.

00:06:40.700 | The seasons are his doing and he's so faithful

00:06:44.980 | that we can make predictions, right?

00:06:46.580 | And you can run the computers to make these weather models

00:06:50.060 | and it works pretty well.

00:06:51.860 | You're relying on the faithfulness of God.

00:06:53.740 | At the same time, you can't predict the weather

00:06:56.940 | on this day of the year, a year from now.

00:06:59.700 | That's something God already knows, but we don't.

00:07:03.420 | So it's both unpredictability and predictability.

00:07:05.980 | And that combination is due to the fact

00:07:08.340 | that God is in harmony with himself, ultimately.

00:07:11.220 | It's creativity, the things that are new and surprising

00:07:14.820 | are in harmony with his faithfulness,

00:07:17.460 | the things that are the same.

00:07:19.260 | And so it can all be traced back to God.

00:07:22.820 | And in fact, to God as transheron God,

00:07:25.460 | because the differentiation of three persons is God

00:07:29.420 | is in back of the differentiations

00:07:31.660 | of the variations we see in the world.

00:07:35.020 | There's a vast area here.

00:07:36.700 | I get excited even as I'm talking about it.

00:07:39.660 | There's a vast area for us to explore and praise God for

00:07:43.620 | and to recover the biblical teaching

00:07:47.540 | that God's hand is in all this.

00:07:49.580 | And it's not just, oh, this happens as if by a mechanism

00:07:53.900 | or without God being present.

00:07:56.860 | - Yeah, and you should get excited.

00:07:58.180 | I mean, this point has stunning implications.

00:08:01.180 | Okay, now back to the ethics of gambling.

00:08:03.320 | It has been humorously said that gambling

00:08:06.500 | is a tax on people who are bad at math.

00:08:09.700 | And in the book, you write this, quote,

00:08:12.140 | "Gambling is a tax on people

00:08:13.620 | "who do not know probability theory," end quote.

00:08:17.340 | But as you point out in the book,

00:08:18.700 | the essential problem is not bad calculations.

00:08:21.680 | The essential problem is bad hearts.

00:08:24.300 | And you write this, quote,

00:08:25.500 | "Gambling is a tax on alienation from God," end quote.

00:08:30.500 | That's powerful.

00:08:31.400 | I mean, perhaps another way we could say it is

00:08:33.620 | fundamentally gambling is a tax on people

00:08:36.420 | whose hearts are not satisfied in God.

00:08:39.780 | Would you say that?

00:08:40.940 | - I would, yeah.

00:08:42.340 | Yeah, because it's related to the fact

00:08:46.700 | I want to trust in something, a break,

00:08:51.060 | some special event where I will get a windfall

00:08:54.900 | rather than trusting in God.

00:08:56.580 | It's an alienation of affections from where they should be.

00:09:01.420 | And that at a deep level, I mean, people,

00:09:03.980 | of course, many people will suppress

00:09:06.300 | what are their true motivations,

00:09:08.540 | because that's the way sin works, right?

00:09:10.780 | You can seal from yourself some of the more rotten aspects

00:09:16.500 | of your own sinful tendencies.

00:09:18.620 | So people don't, aren't conscious of it,

00:09:20.460 | but underneath there is this discontent

00:09:23.780 | with what the lot God has given you.

00:09:26.020 | And sometimes discontent with the plodding nature

00:09:30.340 | of hard work.

00:09:31.340 | So, you know, if I'm putting in work in a job

00:09:35.700 | nine to five, five days a week,

00:09:38.340 | I'll get some benefit from that,

00:09:41.420 | but it's painful in a fallen world,

00:09:45.540 | and it takes a long time, and I'd rather get rich quick.

00:09:48.540 | You know, that's what people think.

00:09:50.420 | - Yeah, okay, finally, anytime we address the lottery

00:09:53.940 | or gambling, Christian Skoff, we hear from people,

00:09:57.140 | people familiar with DG and John Piper,

00:09:59.220 | who will instinctively respond saying,

00:10:01.980 | you know, you fuddy-duddy fundamentalists,

00:10:04.020 | yes, I get the math, but leave me alone,

00:10:06.540 | it's just a hobby, you know, my 20 bucks in nickels

00:10:09.500 | for a casino slot machine on a Friday night,

00:10:11.820 | or my $5 scratch ticket, or my one lottery ticket

00:10:15.500 | I buy annually, it's all benign fun.

00:10:18.700 | Get off my tail, Piper, get off my tail, Poythress,

00:10:21.940 | I'm not a God rejecter.

00:10:23.860 | What would you say to Christians who believe

00:10:25.420 | that gambling, even on a small scale,

00:10:27.540 | is a harmless side hobby?

00:10:30.260 | - Well, I mean, I think there's several things to say.

00:10:33.820 | One is that the issue of motivation is indeed primary,

00:10:38.820 | because Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount

00:10:41.140 | goes after that underlying issue.

00:10:44.300 | So it's not simply a question, well, I can keep

00:10:47.820 | to the letter of the law, and then no matter

00:10:50.820 | where my heart is, it doesn't matter,

00:10:53.100 | it's for the rivers, you know.

00:10:55.540 | You've got to guard your heart,

00:10:57.780 | because from it are the issues of life.

00:11:00.860 | And the heart is deceitful, above all things,

00:11:03.420 | and desperately corrupt, Jeremiah.

00:11:05.260 | So it's easy to conceal the fact underneath,

00:11:08.540 | you know, I wanna have fun, I wanna just have

00:11:10.940 | a relaxing time, yeah, but there are different ways

00:11:14.420 | of having fun and relaxing, and what is underneath that?

00:11:17.740 | So I think that has to be the challenge,

00:11:20.780 | rather than saying, mainly, we have a rule.

00:11:25.340 | But there are other sides to the issue as well,

00:11:28.980 | because the whole gambling industry

00:11:33.660 | is intrinsically has areas of corruption.

00:11:37.180 | And I think the Puritans, they saw the destruction

00:11:40.500 | that came out of that more broadly,

00:11:42.900 | and they were just horrified by that.

00:11:46.980 | And it also takes place in terms of the question of,

00:11:51.340 | even if I win money, is it illicit games?

00:11:55.740 | Because people talk about, the Proverbs has that first one,

00:11:59.700 | it says that if you seek for sudden riches, it's folly,

00:12:04.700 | but if you gain little by little,

00:12:07.940 | and of course, it's also the virtues of hard work,

00:12:10.820 | because that's the calling that God has given us.

00:12:13.740 | Then, you know, that's the way to follow the Lord's way.

00:12:18.580 | So I think there are principles like that as well,

00:12:23.420 | that ought to make us ask a lot of questions

00:12:26.460 | about what are the motivations of the individual,

00:12:29.380 | but also what's the larger picture?

00:12:32.820 | And what makes me most sad is that there are people

00:12:37.820 | who they talk about an addiction

00:12:41.340 | as if an addiction is kind of like a medical thing,

00:12:45.820 | but it's really a spiritual addiction.

00:12:48.100 | It's a bondage to sin,

00:12:50.580 | and there are people who are addicted gamblers,

00:12:53.380 | and they're destroying their families,

00:12:56.220 | and they get themselves into debt and all kinds of things.

00:13:01.100 | It preys, I'm told, a lot on the poor,

00:13:05.140 | because the poor are looking for a quick way out

00:13:07.900 | of all the struggles of their situation,

00:13:11.340 | and this seems to offer salvation.

00:13:13.340 | And again, when I use that language, you can see,

00:13:16.340 | it's really a kind of counterfeit form of salvation.

00:13:19.940 | Here's what will get you out of your troubles.

00:13:22.500 | - It is, and it is a sobering way to end our time this week,

00:13:26.700 | but Dr. Poythress, thank you for being with us

00:13:28.940 | these past couple of days.

00:13:30.660 | - You're welcome, I'm glad to have been here.

00:13:33.340 | - Dr. Vern Poythress, you can get his book,

00:13:35.860 | "Chance in the Sovereignty of God" for free

00:13:38.460 | at his website at frame-poythress.org,

00:13:42.300 | frame-poythress.org.

00:13:45.220 | The entire PDF is there, you can download it and read it.

00:13:47.860 | It's a book publishing strategy

00:13:49.420 | very similar to ours at Desiring God.

00:13:52.620 | Well, we must break now for the weekend.

00:13:54.940 | On Monday, John Piper returns to answer a listener question

00:13:57.420 | who wants to know if sin has a necessary place

00:14:00.660 | in God's plan.

00:14:02.220 | Does sin have a necessary place in God's plan?

00:14:06.100 | It's an interesting way to put it.

00:14:07.540 | You can find all the stuff you need to enjoy

00:14:09.800 | and engage with this podcast at our online home

00:14:11.860 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:14:15.780 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:14:16.940 | I'll see you on Monday.

00:14:18.100 | (upbeat music)

00:14:20.680 | (upbeat music)

00:14:23.260 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Why Casinos Always Win in the End

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