The Gambler

** The following essay is written from a Christian perspective. If this offends you, please return another day for satire stories.

We are all gamblers.

You might say, “I don’t play betting games. I don’t buy Lotto, Powerball, or scratch tickets and I’ve never stepped into a casino once.”

Well, you start betting the moment you get out of bed in the morning. Betting all your appliances still work in the house; betting if you ride your bike that you won’t get hit by a car; betting you won’t get into an accident with your car. Everything is a bet that things will go your way.

There is also a bet that we have concerning God. . . betting there is one, or betting there is not.

There are many reasons why a person believes, doesn’t believe, respects, or has no respect for God.

Many have been hurt, not by God, but by someone who calls themself a Christian, or a church which has damaged a relationship with its rules or values.

There are those who choose to argue against the existence of a God based upon their view of science. If, in fact, everything that is, was brought into existence by a word from God, we would be accountable to that God.

It is easier to know that there is global warming, pollution, poverty, and prejudice and do nothing about it. To let someone else deal with it. It is the same thing having the attitude of the apathetic agnostic who says that “there may or may not be a God but, I really don’t care if there is or isn’t one.”

This is the gamble. To the atheist and the ambivalent let me challenge you about God.

We both have something in common which is guaranteed. At some point we will both die.

Now, if there is no God, when we die, we cease to exist. Nothingness. The atheist was right. The life that was me and you was just a biological wonder. The earth and everything on it evolved, and the universe happened by some “big bang” or the “big break of the racked balls.”

We stand as equals; you were right, and I was wrong, but we have the same fate.

But, as a non-believer in God, what if you were wrong?

What if at the moment we die, we don’t cease to exist? What if we immediately enter a heavenly realm that in our human mind is impossible to find words to describe.

What if, the very first being that we meet face to face is the one who died on a cross as a sacrifice for the sin of everyone.

What if, as a child of God, the Lord Jesus wraps his arms around me and says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. I have a place prepared for you.”

What if the denier of God also stands before the same God. The Gambler who made it his life’s goal to deny the existence of God and who openly mocked those who were believers.

What if Jesus kept his distance from you and said, “If you had acknowledged me before man and made me your Lord, I would have acknowledged you before the Father. But you denied me before others, therefore I denied you before the Father. Be gone, for I never knew you.”

What if, as the confident Gambler, you lost your bet?

Kenny Rogers points out the risks of high stakes gambling in his song, The Gambler:

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em

Know when to fold ’em

Know when to walk away

And know when to run

You never count your money

When you’re sittin’ at the table

There’ll be time enough for countin’

When the dealin’s done.

The Gambler’s bet on the existence of God is the highest you will ever make and one which should be taken very, very seriously.

Eternity, by our choice, in the presence of God or eternity separated from God is a very long, long time.

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