John Piper received this question in Ask Pastor John: “Hello Pastor John .... The bets I place are rather modest at $20–$50 a week. Is modest online sports gambling sinful?”[1] I will return later to give Piper’s answer. I quote this young man to show that this is an important question that is often asked.

Maura J. Casey wrote a devastating article titled "Gambling with Lives." Casey relates some personal gambling tragedies:

A friend of mine told me that to escape the burdens of motherhood she would go to the casinos at 2 A.M. to gamble until 6:30 A.M., when she would go back home and get her kids ready for school. Until the day she didn’t go home in time—unable to stop playing the slots. A worried state legislator called to tell me her husband emptied her sixteen-year-old son’s college fund to gamble at the casinos. A bank manager told me about a customer who inherited $1 million and—aided by using the ATM machines at the casino to withdraw money—gambled it all away. A woman who worked at my daughter’s day care moved her family to Florida in a desperate attempt at a geographic cure after her husband drained money from his ten-year-old’s savings account and couldn’t stop going to the area casinos.[2]