Sports betting is exploding across the country. With online platforms, mobile apps, and aggressive marketing, it’s never been easier to gamble — or easier to hide it. What many view as harmless entertainment may actually be reshaping how we think about money, community, and even discipleship.
Pastor and author Kyle Worley—Lead Pastor of Mosaic Church in Richardson, Texas, co-host of the Knowing Faith podcast, and author of Home with God: Our Union with Christ—recently wrote on this growing trend for Faithful Steward magazine. Today, he joins the show to explain why the rise of sports gambling deserves more careful thought from believers.
A Different Kind of Gambling
Sports gambling carries a unique appeal. Unlike casinos or the lottery, it taps into nostalgia, play, and community.
“Sports connect to childhood memories and communal experiences,” Worley notes. “That nostalgia makes sports betting feel natural, even harmless.”
The danger lies in how subtly wagering attaches itself to something already meaningful—games shared with friends, family, or childhood heroes—making it easier to dismiss spiritual risks.
What Does Scripture Actually Say?
The Bible does not explicitly outlaw gambling. But it repeatedly warns against the desire for quick, hasty gain. Worley points to 1 Timothy 6:9–10, noting that it speaks directly to the temptations and destruction tied to wealth pursued rapidly and without wisdom. Gambling fits that pattern.
Scripture’s concern is not merely financial but formational. Gambling trains us to view wealth through the lens of chance, speed, and self-interest—the opposite of stewardship, patience, and contentment.
The spiritual stakes aren’t just internal. They are profoundly communal. Worley cites Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke:
“The righteous disadvantage themselves for the sake of the community; the unrighteous advantage themselves at the expense of the community.”
Modern betting apps are built on asymmetric outcomes—they profit only because others lose. And statistically, those losses fall disproportionately on the vulnerable.
Many platforms use predatory models:
- Winners face worse odds or even shuttered accounts
- Consistent losers are enticed with better odds and larger limits
Worley compares it to handing a chainsaw to a child—unjust simply because not everyone absorbs the harm equally.
Normalization and Cultural Formation
Sports gambling has moved from taboo to mainstream with startling speed. Betting lines now appear on ESPN, broadcasts, and social media—even during youth-oriented sports programming.
The result: a generation being formed to see gambling as normal and morally neutral.
Worley warns that where gambling proliferates, other forms of exploitation follow — including human trafficking during major sporting events. While the Bible may speak indirectly about gambling, it speaks directly about exploitation.
Some point to the biblical practice of casting lots as justification for gambling. Worley draws a sharp distinction:
Casting lots was a religious act of trust—not a wager. It carried no profit motive and served no entertainment purpose. Reframing it as support for modern gambling misunderstands its role entirely.
