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Addictions

Satan has so many temptations that are so attractive and pleasurable.   McDonald's is the obvious one.  We must not turn to high, bad fat foods for comfort.  Oprah said she would eat a whole bag of potato chips.  Finally she took control, lost some weight, and has a book and video on how she did it.

The list of addictions is long.  Heroin, alcohol, tobacco, food, and sex are just a few.  Satan is the cause of aids.  Immoral lifestyles seem exciting, and God's lifestyle is joked at as being boring, but the wages of sin is death.  Some believe that the greatest addiction of all is TV.

Studies show that people who live a moral life live longer and better than those who don't.  It is physically good for you to attend church, get married, have children, pray, work hard, be honest, and care for others.  The author of Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl said that he saw that those who lived the longest in concentration camps were those that had reasons to live.  The greatest reason to live is the love of family.  I think that there are studies that show that women who have children and nurse have less chance to get cancer and live longer in general than single women.

Disciplined Gambling?

Mrs. Nora Spurgin is the number one woman leader in the American UC. She gave a speech on how to have a good marriage. In it she said that one characteristic of good marriages is that men and women are disciplined. She gave one example of how they can be disciplined. She said that they should stay within their budget when they gamble in a casino. So is gambling is now part of God's way of life?

In early speeches, Father says he's gone to Atlantic City and digested its evil. In the book, World's Scriptures, Andrew Wilson says gambling is denounced by all major religions. Rev. Han, in his forty day Divine Principle lectures, speaks strongly about gambling being a sin. Apparently, now it is okay in moderation. Does this mean that alcohol is okay in moderation too?

In a recent speech, Father had a sentence in a paragraph about hobby businesses in which he says casinos are okay. With all due respect, we have a hard time seeing how this is heavenly. What good can come out of it? The owners make a ton of money but the vast majority of their customers lose.

People should provide a service in which you help others. God's way is win/win. It is not to earn money by giving hopeless odds at a casino. The Mormon businessman, Marriot, sells liquer and cigarrettes at his fancy hotels worldwide. Why? He is a Mormon and these things things are against his religion.

Compulsive Gambling

Typically religious people preach against gambling. For example, Beverly LaHaye at their website for her women's organization that is the largest Christian women's organization in the world, says that is "Dangerous: A study released by the SMR Research Corporation of Hackettstown, NJ, found a correlation between bankruptcy and gambling. "It now appears that gambling may be the single fastest growing driver of bankruptcy," said George Yacik, the researcher who wrote the gambling portion of the report for the credit-card industry.

The bankruptcy rate was 71% higher in Atlantic city than in any other town in New Jersey. Likewise, the rates are astronomical in Las Vegas and in a cluster of cities around Mississippi riverboat casinos.

Families are paying the price for the expansion of the gambling industry in our country. Ann Geer, chair of the National Coalition Against Gambling Extension, stated, "Gambling is one of the fastest growing addictions in the country. Addicts could literally click their mouse and bet the house."

Gambling is a way of escape for many people. Allowing the Internet to provide in-house access will convert the family home into a casino. Since gambling is illegal unless it is regulated by the states, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) plans to introduce a bill in September which would ban interstate gambling for the Internet. In addition, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) has introduced a bill to ban Internet gambling unless permitted by state law.

 


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