"Gambling is Against My Religion"

Someone told me something recently that had me thinking for awhile afterwards.

I was paying a bill off, and found I was about two dollars short. It wasn't a problem; it was the kind of bill I could come back and pay off later. But when he gave me the bill amount, I opened my wallet and emptied all the cash I had on me, and half-jokingly said, "I'm afraid I'll have to come back with the last couple dollars, unless you'd take this (scratch off) lotto ticket."

"Oh, no. Gambling's against my religion."

The reason that stuck with me was that it struck me as being kind of ridiculous to say that gambling is against your religion. Why, exactly, is it against Christian belief to gamble?

In doing some basic research, I can find no reference in the Bible to gambling as a sin. Apparently it's something that has been layered upon as another interpretation certain sects had added over time. Some argue that gambling is just bad when it is done to excess; other responsibilities go unmet to feed an addiction to gambling. In that regard the idea of gambling being "evil" isn't particular to any Christian group.

Another argument is that it's taking advantage of thy neighbor, thus against one of the tenets of Christ in that gambling exploits someone else in order to profit.

While I suppose these are interesting ideas in themselves, my own question came from the idea that gambling is little more than math and statistics used to play a game. Usually that game involves displaying that you're bad at math and statistics, but it's still taking a chance of losing something while hoping for the odds to be in your favor of gaining something. Or if they're not in your favor, that you'll beat the odds and gain something.

Gambling is nothing but playing statistics.

I take a gamble getting out of bed in the morning. Going to the subway. Or going just about anywhere. I'm gambling that I won't fall. Or get pushed into a train's path. Or robbed, shot, or hit by a car. I come back to my apartment with the odds being that this time there won't be a fire. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and just getting up and going about my routine day is a gamble that the day will continue to be routine.

So how is it rational to say that gambling is against your religion?

My second thought is that Christianity itself is a gamble. Christianity is taken on faith; there is no evidence to support the "truths" put forth in the Bible. From the ark to the mass exodus from Egypt, there is no actual evidence to support that the Bible accounts have occurred.

Yet Christians base their life choices on the word of the Bible (and a heavy dose of interpretation by their priests/ministers.)

So in a way, that's a gamble. The Christian is betting that there is a God and that God is the God described in their sect's interpretation of the Bible.

Third...that ticket was scraped. There was no gambling; I knew for a fact it won four bucks.

I should probably clarify that this isn't meant to reflect upon the person that made the statement, but rather the idea behind it. It's something I don't understand. If someone can explain it in rational terms, I'd be all ears...