Where Am I Blind?

Where Am I Blind?

I would not allege that the jurors in the recent gambling corruption trial are blind. I did not hear a word of testimony at either of the two trials that resulted in acquittals on all charges for Milton McGregor and five co-defendants. What I do know is that several people involved in the scheme to expanded legalized gambling in Alabama pleaded guilty to trying to bribe public officials and that public officials understood bribes were being offered and so testified. 

I would not allege that only the blind fail to see that the partners of those who confessed to illegal activity and are already serving prison sentences for their actions are also guilty of the same crimes. All the partners worked from a common strategy. They presented a united front as they schemed to expand their gambling empires. They planned their efforts together. Of course, being guilty and proving guilt in a court of law are two different things. 

Still for McGregor and others to argue that promising or providing financial support to public officials who promise to vote for one’s bill is “just the way the game (of politics) is played” is a nondefense. It turns a blind eye to the fact that a difference in quantity can become a difference in quality. For example, a church may say it has a recreation program because it has a pingpong table in the basement, but the quantitative differences between that and a church that has a full-blown recreation program, complete with a family life center and a director of church recreation, make a qualitative difference. 

Said another way, there comes a point when the quantity of support offered public officials who support one’s positions can cross from innocent to criminal.

Some of the perpetrators acknowledged they knew they were doing wrong. Some public officials knew wrong was being done. It is hard to believe that everyone involved did not see the illegal implications of what they were doing. Perhaps they, too, were blind.

John Carroll, dean of the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, said, “I think there are enough facts (that) with a particular jury and a particular set of prosecutors, you may have gotten a conviction” (The Birmingham News, March 11). That observation did not come from one with a blind eye about legal matters. It came from one with a keen eye from years of service as a magistrate judge.

But the outcome was an acquittal, and that could be the outcome for any number of reasons. In the American system, even justice is supposed to be administered with a blind eye. 

According to the July 21, 2010, Birmingham News, VictoryLand, one of McGregor’s casinos, took in $637 million in revenue in the four years before it was shut down in 2010. Gross profits amounted to $503 million. Charitable contributions totaled $4.4 million. That is less than 1 percent of what is called “charitable bingo gambling.” 

The News reported July 27, 2011, that McGregor’s income for 2009 was $28.3 million. The year VictoryLand was closed, he lost $2.5 million.

Now McGregor is bragging he will reopen all his gambling sites and plunge the state back into another fight over the role of gambling in Alabama. In a full-page ad in the March 11 Birmingham News, he thanked God for the jury verdict and friends who stood by him during his time of persecution. 

Evidently McGregor is blind to the inconsistency of offering thanks to God for his acquittal and announcing his intention to return to activities that violate basic principles of God’s Word and undermine the moral fiber of society as a whole. 

Preying on others’ base instincts in order to greedily gather riches to oneself is not a virtue found in the Bible.

Unfortunately McGregor is not the only one blind to the evils of legalized gambling. Space does not permit a full report on gambling’s evils. This publication has outlined those many times. Suffice it to say that every academically credible study concludes that gambling does not pay for itself when compared to the social costs it inflicts on society. 

Still, in Alabama and Mississippi — places where I have lived and served, places where Baptists make up a sizable percentage of the state’s population — legalized gambling is a reality. That fact is a shameful indictment of Baptists for neither state could have approved gambling without Baptist votes. 

Baptists, like others, seem willing to turn a blind eye to the cultural evils fostered by gambling and its violation of basic Christian teachings in return for the promise of a few low-paying jobs or not having to adopt a fair and adequate tax structure for their respective state. 

Baptists, like others, turn a blind eye to Christian social responsibility by rationalizing that while they will never gamble, neither will they stand in the way of someone who may want to gamble.

Spiritual blindness is not limited to gambling. The response of some readers to previous columns advocating care for the hungry and hurting among us has been to label such concerns “liberal” or part of the “social gospel.” 

Such responses show blindness to the teaching of God’s Word to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and heal the sick. One is not made right before God by such activities, but such actions demonstrate that one is right with God (Matt. 25:31ff). 

Proverbs 29:7 makes that point. There the writer declared, “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” Often we are blind because we are not righteous. God forgive us. 

It is impossible to write about others’ spiritual blindness without wondering about one’s own spiritual blindness. Jesus warned against the self-righteous in Matthew 7:3 when He talked about those who rail against the sawdust in their brother’s eye but ignore the beam in their own eye. 

Thus the title of this column. Where am I blind? Please pray for me that I will be open to God showing me areas where I am blind. And together we can pray that God will help us all to be about bringing light to a dark world that prefers to live as if it were blind to the evils that abound.