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Editors’ note: Questions and Ethics is a monthly series in which Russell Moore provides insight into how Christians should navigate through life’s most challenging moral and ethical issues. The following is an edited transcript of this audio.]


Today’s question comes from Matt, a parent wondering about the morality of a popular form of schools fundraising.

“Dr. Moore, I am about to become a band dad for the first time,” and I am assuming what he means by that is that he has a kid who is about the join the high school marching band. “One of the fundraisers our high school band uses is raffle tickets.” Matt continues,

There are limited numbers of tickets available, and it’s a winner-take-all pot for the winning raffle ticket. Tickets are sold for $10 apiece, and the prize pot is $5,000 to $10,000.

My concern is that every member of the marching band is required to participate in the fundraisers, which include selling these raffle tickets. There is a buyout provision where our child won’t have to sell the tickets.

I don’t see how this is any different than gambling or a lottery, and how should I as a Christian respond to forms of gambling like this that are for a good cause?

To answer the question, let’s consider why we should be opposed to gambling. One of the primary reasons is that gambling teaches that money can be obtained through chance rather than through work. Gambling denigrates the work ethic.

More importantly, gambling is predation upon the poor. State-sponsored and industrialized gambling (such as in casinos) uses the illusion of winning in order to take money away from the poor. That is one of the reasons why the people hardest hit in any given community are the poor, who are are more prone to become addicted to gambling. As a pastor I dealt with cases of gambling addiction in my hometown. I remember one family we went to visit that had only lawn furniture in the family’s apartment because the husband had become addicted to gambling and had sold off everything—including the furniture—to pay for his habit.

Lotteries are similar in that they are essentially a super-regressive tax upon poor people. Lotteries provide false hope and a manipulative, illusory means of getting out of poverty.

The question we should ask concerning raffles is whether they are similar to these forms of gambling. I don’t believe they are. Raffles merely provide a prize to people who are already giving to a good cause. Having said that, I can see why somebody who has a conscientious objection to even the appearance of gambling ought not to participate. I think one’s conscience ought to hold with its integrity even if you and I might have different levels of scruples about what that is.

You are probably thinking this raffle is going to teach some things to your high schooler that you don’t want to teach about gambling, about work ethic, and so on. You are probably also not wanting to teach a sense of quarrelsomeness with objecting to this in the wrong way. I sense this from the way that you are carefully laying out your argument here. The teaching that you are wanting to give to your high schooler is clear, and you are supportive of what you see as a good cause (i.e., supporting the band). So, what I would suggest is that you find a way—and I think there are several options—to maintain a clear conscience without being quarrelsome.

One of the things that you could do is to say we are going to give to the band, and we are going to encourage people to give to the band, without taking a raffle ticket. If you have moral objections to this raffle, yet believe it is for a good cause, then you may say, “Let’s all of us who have similiar objections give even more to the cause.” Or you may say we are going to buy these tickets, but we are going to commit to not taking the raffle prize; instead, we are going to donate it back to the band.

There are ways to support this good cause without violating your conscience, and at the same time, to do so with that Romans 12–14 understanding of not judging people who differ with you on a point of conscience. I would say the same thing if the person were writing to me saying we’ve got this one stick-in-the-mud guy who is not wanting to sell raffles for the band. I would say you need to bear with the consciences of another. We should teach our children how to stand with the principle and conscience in the way you define it, while also teaching them how not to be pharisaical about the situation.

Admittedly, I don’t always follow through effectively with my own children. There are certain things that we don’t do in our household that I have to work really hard to make sure my children don’t automatically assume those families that do participate in those things are awful people. That is an important lesson and an important conversation to have—we in our family aren’t going to participate in this because Dad has a moral objection to it. I think that there are some issues here that might lead to some bad things. But we should be able to object without resorting to a turn-the-table-over, thus-sayeth-the-Lord approach that doesn’t really apply to something as low level as a band raffle.

Related: You can find more answers to ethical questions and subscribe to the Questions and Ethics podcast on the website of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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