Family Life: Inside Out: Sports Betting - RaShan Frost - 2/05/25

Inside Out: The Ethics of Sports Gambling

A Family Life Wednesday News Feature

Pastor and professor Dr. RaShan Frost joins Inside Out to talk about sports gambling’s many dangers. A former Auburn football player and coach, Dr. Frost now serves as a senior fellow and director of research for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Unfortunately, we don’t speak as a church about gambling or the dangers of gambling anymore, and there are several problems,” says Dr. RaShan Frost. “The moral dangers, the spiritual dangers, the financial---and I would also add relational as well.”

A pastor and professor, Frost was a tight end and defensive tackle at Auburn and later a coach. For this Inside Out podcast on sports gambling, he leans on his love for Jesus and his expertise as senior fellow and director of research for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Here’s the danger that we really need to talk about: there’s actually an increase of male to female inter-partner violence,” he says. “There’s actually an 11 percent increase. So, you’re finding that Super Bowl weekend, because of bets and things like that and sports betting, there’s going to be an increase in domestic violence.”

Gambling thrives on making money the singular focus, and Frost points out that this is both idolatry and covetousness.

“So you got the inter-partner violence. You got family violence,” he says. “Also, we see that those who engage in sports gambling also binge drink at disproportionate levels than those who don’t participate in sports betting. We’re seeing physical and emotional health problems, and that’s not even talking about the financial strain. So we’re talking about covetousness, we’re talking about greed, we’re talking about discontent. All of these things are precipitating these other effects. It’s bad not only for the individual, but for families and communities as well. There’s an increase in bankruptcy rates, debt collections, debt consolidation loans, auto loan delinquencies. All of this is happening, and it goes back to the passage where Jesus says, ‘What profits a man to gain the whole world and yet lose his soul?’.  Is it worth it?”

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