The lottery is a game where people buy tickets, and if they match all the winning numbers, they get the prize money. The winnings are typically split among all the ticket holders, so if you win, you won’t be getting the whole jackpot. You will probably only keep about a third of the prize money, which is still pretty decent. One of the secrets to winning the lottery is bringing in investors. Romanian-born mathematician Stefan Mandel once organized a lottery with 2,500 investors and won over $1.3 million. But out of that, he kept only about $97,000 after paying out his investors.
Lotteries have a long history, including several examples in the Bible. The Old Testament instructs Moses to conduct a census of Israel and divide land by lot, and Roman emperors used lotteries as a way to give away property and slaves during Saturnalian feasts.
In colonial-era America, lotteries were a common form of raising funds for a variety of projects, from building Harvard and Yale to paving streets and constructing wharves. George Washington sponsored a lottery in 1768 to build a road across the Blue Ridge Mountains, and rare lottery tickets bearing his signature have become collectors’ items.
Today, state governments promote their lotteries by stressing how much the proceeds benefit a specific public good. But that message is flawed, and it obscures how regressive the games are. It also reflects the underlying assumption that money is the answer to all of life’s problems, which runs counter to God’s prohibition on covetousness (see Exodus 20:17). The truth is, however, that money won in a lottery is not enough to solve most people’s problems—or even all of theirs.