LOTTO, ANYONE? FALLING INTO TEMPTATION AND TRAP

 

Have you ever bought a lotto ticket hoping to win a big prize and change your life? Have you ever wondered if playing the lotto is right or wrong? Have you ever considered its moral and spiritual implications?

PCSO General Manager Melquiades Robles: We have to protect the identity of the winner. Mayroong pong nagreklamo sa amin one time, we covered the face, yung damit naman po nakita. So nagreklamo siya sana naman daw po wag ipakita yung damit. Yan po ang reason n’yan.

Senator Raffy Tulfo: And I agree it’s a very poor editing pero the objective is to conceal the clothing na ma-identify sa kanya.

Robles: If there’s something we apologize for, it’s the poor editing, but I think has served the purpose of concealing the identity.

Tulfo: Pero yung tao hindi edited?

Robles: Hindi po. Totoo po ‘yan, tunay na tao yan.

The viral PCSO lotto squabble reminds me of the following anecdote.

A priest, a rabbi, and a minister were playing poker in a basement. They were having a good time until they heard a knock on the door. It was the police, who had received a tip that there was illegal gambling going on.

The priest quickly hid the cards under the table, and opened the door.

Priest: Hello, officer, what can we do for you?

Officer: We have a report that there is gambling going on on this premises. Is that true?

Priest: No, officer, we are just having a friendly discussion about religion.

Officer: Really? Then what is that under the table?

Priest: That? That’s just a donation box for the poor.

Officer: Well, then, let me see it.

He lifted the box and saw the cards.

Officer: What are these?

Priest: These? These are our holy cards.

Officer: And what about this?

He pointed to a pile of chips.

Priest: Those? Those are our miracles.

Rounding off this lively icebreaker (obviously to catch and hold on to your attention), have you heard this Cardinal Sin’s joke (surely has transfigured since then into many versions)?

In one social event where the cardinal was invited, someone commented to the cardinal who was holding a glass of wine: “So, our beloved cardinal is drinking wine tonight.”

The Cardinal exclaims, “Gosh, it’s a miracle! My water turns into wine.”

The first miracle performed by Jesus in the Bible has eventually become a good source of wit like the Cardinal’s joke.

In the first anecdote, the priest could have gotten out of the “gotcha” moment by simply quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Games of chance or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice. They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others.”

Concerning the PCSO’s squabble, it could have opted for another way of concealing the identity of the winner – an anonymity policy common in the U.S. – such as the Powerball, a multi-state lottery game that allows winners to remain anonymous in some states.

PCSO should not have resorted to editing photos – a hideous task, in this age of AI, that hangs around with deepfake -- the digital alteration of facial appearance through deep generative methods.

When all is said and done, aiming singly at the PCSO is missing the forest for the trees. There is more to such a squabble than meets the eye. At this point, some fragment of gut feeling embedded in my previous ATABAY article Destabilization Plot: The Hole In The Donut keeps clueing in my mind. I wrote:

“Looking back, at one time or another, do you still remember you said to yourself, ‘I know what all the facts and details say, but it just doesn’t feel right.’ Why did you say that? Because the parts of your brain, the limbic sections, the Golden Circle’s Why and How, that control your decision-making, don’t control your language.

“So, in times like that, you just take a deep breath and say, ‘I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.’”

It just doesn’t feel right on the PCSO’s squabble because it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Diving into the water, we will see below the water surface the larger chunk of the iceberg weighed down by the massive weight of corruption and poverty.

Here are the somber realities staring at us:

“The Philippines is perceived to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Of the 180 countries… ranked 116 in terms of being least corrupt... the Philippines is almost in the top one-third of being the most corrupt… based on the Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International.” (Management Association of the Philippines)

Senator Jinggoy Estrada’s recent conviction of bribery in the pork barrel scam has showcased the scale of corruption up to the top. Former senator Juan Ponce Enrile as well, now chief presidential legal adviser, has a pending plunder case, notoriously dragged on in the court due to technical petitions.

“Nearly half of Filipino families still consider themselves poor” – Manila Bulletin

“The main economic problem in the Philippines is its massive poverty, as sensed by the people themselves. In December 2023, almost half of all families felt Poor, only one in five felt Not Poor, and one in three felt on the border.” (Inquirer’s Mahar Mangahas in his column Social Climate)

What’s more, Mangahas in his October 8, 2022 column “Kursunada” in Lotto wrote:

“As of late 2010, 49 percent [almost half] of all adult Filipinos – equivalent to 28 million persons - had bought a Lotto ticket in the previous 12 months, according to the Social Weather Stations national survey in November that year.”

The triad of poverty, corruption, and lotto is like a deadly trap that ensnares and imprisons the poor and holds them off from escaping or breaking free. The poor are lured by the bait of the lotto, which promises a quick and easy way out of their poverty, but they end up falling into the snare of corruption, which exploits and oppresses them.

The trap keeper -- the powerful and the wealthy – thrived from their misery and desperation – mga nawawala, nagwawala, at walang-wala – in the words of Fr. Jerry Orbos.

Here are five deep-rooted reasons not to play the lottery that John Piper, founder and teacher of desiringGoddotorg, asserted:

1.    It is spiritually suicidal. “Those who strive to be rich fall into temptations and traps. A lot of foolish and harmful ambitions plunge them into ruin and destruction.” (1 Tim 6:9)

2.    It is a kind of embezzlement. All we have belongs to God. We don’t gamble with our God’s money.

3.    It is a fool’s errand. We pick 6 numbers from a possible pool of 49 numbers, our chances of winning the jackpot (correctly choosing all 6 numbers drawn) are 1 in 13,983,816. That’s 1 shot in almost 14 million. If we were to buy one lottery ticket each week in such a scenario, we could expect to win once every 269,000 years. Many lotteries have even worse odds.

4.    The system is built on the necessity of most people losing. Lotteries are “just another form of gambling (sans glamor and glitz of Las Vegas). The ‘house’ controls the action, and the players will all eventually lose.” (International Business Times)

5.    It preys on the poor. The lottery supports and encourages “yet another corrosive addiction that preys upon the greed and hopeless dreams of those trapped in poverty…” (The Consumerist)

A government that raises money by encouraging and exploiting the weaknesses of its citizens escapes that democratic mechanism of accountability. As important, state-sponsored gambling undercuts the civic virtue upon which democratic governance depends. (First Things, Sep 1991)

Content put together in collaboration with Microsoft Bing AI-powered Copilot

Head photo courtesy of Inquirer

Video clips courtesy of YouTube