Viewpoints
“They divided my clothes among themselves. They gambled for my robes.” (John 19:24)
By +Oscar V. Cruz D. D.
It might be not only absurd but also futile for all consummate private and government gambling lords to be reminded about the painful lamentation made by Christ Himself while hanging and dying at the Cross that grim and bloody Friday. Nevertheless, such detestable gambling characters devoid of conscience, in no way lessen the profound significance and big relevance of One of the Seven Last Words of Christ – categorically against gambling as synonymous to greed that is a terrible vice which deadens conscience and thereby destroys moral living. While crystal clear, said lords of gambling are not aware that in fact they are miserable slaves of money.
Syndicated and corporate gambling operators today in this poor Country long since sucking the already little blood left of destitute Filipinos, are exactly doing what was done to Christ that First Good Friday some two thousand years ago. By inducing particularly poor people to gamble, even the clothes at their backs are practically ripped from them by the gambling operators who likewise gleefully grab and covetously divide whatever item they could pocket from their victims – from thousands down to but several pesos, if not but some miserable centavos. Gambling per se has radically nothing to do with anything else but money, money, money.
If trusting gamblers is like welcoming deadly snakes to one’s home, cavorting with gambling operators is like embracing whitened sepulchers with everything rotten and putrid therein. The bigger their operations are, the more cash they grab, jewelries they get, i.o.u’s they collect. All these make the gambling operators exactly like fattened cows, all ready for their good roasting by the eventual fires of physical maladies and emotional miseries plus curses here and now – not to mention what could be in store for them hereafter and beyond. All famous gambling operators infamously end their lives, and at the same time infallibly drag their own families deep down into the gutters of society.
Thus it is that while gambling addicts are in effect deluded if not disordered in their personality constitution, gambling operators on the other hand in fact end up as amoral social agents whose only basis for thinking and acting is how much money they rake in from gullible gamblers. For these composite curses of society, what is objectively right or wrong, honest or dishonest, just or unjust, do not really matter. For these big parasites of society, what only matters is money, viz., how much money they can take away from foolish gamblers, and how they can have this done – irrespective of time, place and season.
Gambling corporations, institutions agencies and the like, all diligently attempt to cover the vice and curse they are peddling. Here is how: They call themselves as but “gaming” enterprises! How insidious! How shallow! How dopey!
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