Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com. Mr. Bible likes gambling:
It’s perfect A reader who knows I treasure names that are either especially apt or especially ironic — like Robert Dollar for a treasurer, or Heather Honest for a crook — sends me one that I believe is intended to be ironic, and that is Bill Bible, president of a casino trade group, the Nevada Resort Association. How funny that a man who promotes gambling should be named for Holy Scripture, the very font of virtuous living, as far removed as it can be from profane games of chance, I believe is the idea. Sort of like of a prostitute being named Inocencia. But ladies and gentlemen, I have read Scripture, and I know better. I know that God Himself used to be a great promoter of games of chance, at least if you trust the Holy Word, and often made His will known by such means. It was known in ancient times as casting lots. We don’t know exactly what the “lots” were in those times, whether dice or straws or something else, but we know the ancients were very big on them, and we know they attributed this custom of theirs to the Supreme Being that they thought looked after them, just as they attributed all their customs, fortunes and misfortunes to Him. For example, when Jonah fl ed from God and a great tempest arose to threaten the ship he was on, what did his shipmates do to fi nd out who was to blame? (Assuming that someone had to be to blame.) Did they conduct an inquiry? No, they cast lots, and sure enough the lots pointed to Jonah, who was forced to fess up, which is how he came to be thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish, or whale, that God had provided for the occasion. They might have drawn straws to see who got the shortest one, or they might have rolled dice, or done anything else with a random unforeseeable outcome that people have done over the centuries to try to get a handle on reality. We don’t know the exact mechanism. Likewise with the division of land among the children of Israel. “The Lord spake unto Moses saying … the land shall be divided by lot,” which is how they did it (Numbers, Chap. 26). You might say they gambled for the land, at God’s direction. Likewise for choosing an apostle to succeed Judas, in the New Testament. That too was done by the casting of lots, which was seen as a way for God to reveal his wishes. “Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen,” was what the apostles prayed when they rolled the dice (Acts 1:24), just as some African tribes put a mouse in a little box with tiny levers sticking out of it and purport to read the mind of their deity by seeing which ones the mouse pushes. For the people who engage in these practices it’s a demonstration of higher power. At least sometimes. When the Roman soldiers cast lots to see who got Jesus’ clothes after they crucified him, we suppose that was merely the equivalent of tossing a coin. But then we don’t know the soldiers’ point of view, since they didn’t leave any record. They might have thought they were reading the will of Jupiter. Cleromancy it’s called, generically, this interpreting reality by throwing dice or pebbles or bits of bone, and seeing how they turn up, and it goes back at least as far as ancient Egypt. It’s distinct from sortilege or augury, which have more to do with predicting the future, though it’s based on a similar worldview. It was an established practice in Scriptural times, so old Bill Bible has nothing to be embarrassed about as he promotes games of chance in Nevada. In fact, you could say he is most aptly named.
Cleromancy it’s called, generically, this interpreting reality by throwing dice or pebbles or bits of bone, and seeing how they turn up, and it goes back at least as far as ancient Egypt. It’s distinct from sortilege or augury, which have more to do with predicting the future, though it’s based on a similar worldview.
This is a good lesson for us today.....the government seeks to set itself up as a godhead(supposedly better than God), what with welfare, SS, National Health Care etc.....maybe we should take a lesson here and realize that EVERYTHING is casting lots, or 'best laid planes of mice and men'...... only in America the option to 'get out of your pit' is better for choice.....that is why folks left England and the likes to leave tyranny.......America IS liberty or 'lots'....yet we reap what we sow.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
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