What Are the Odds of Winning God's Lottery?

"If I could only win the super game," the woman told the TV reporter, "I'd be able to live on easy-street the rest of my life." Others standing in line, waiting to buy their tickets, told similar stories.

State lotteries have become big business in our nation with nearly every state in the nation now running its own game. "It helps keep taxes down," parroted one official, "by channeling surplus 'house' dollars into the state treasury."

"I don't agree," put in one who spoke against his own state's lottery. "The people who buy the lottery tickets are usually poor people who really can't afford to waste all that money. And more than half of all the proceeds are gobbled up in administration and prizes. It's like taxing the poor double for the goods they receive."

Lotteries remain a hot topic regardless on which side you find yourself. And no matter what you think, they seem to be here to stay. People just can't resist the chance to win really big bucks merely by buying "a little one-dollar ticket". (Even if they had to buy hundreds of them and never won a cent!)

What are the odds of winning one of the big-cheese prizes? In one recent ad I received in the mail for the Canadian Lottery, the small print at the bottom of the ad explained that there were only 840 chances to win 100 million dollars. That means, of the tens of millions who spend hundreds of millions of dollars on tickets over the period of weeks before the big drawing, only 840 will win (if they all claim their prize; many lottery tickets are lost or otherwise never redeemed).

But what about the big winners? "Just think of their joy! Instant millionaires!" Right? Wrong. Even the winners lose, for their dream of becoming a multi-millionaire evaporates in the post-drawing reality. When you divide $100 million 840 ways you come out with only $119,078. So if you and every other winner turns in their ticket, you'll be stuck with a measly 100 grand, man! INSTEAD OF 100 MILLION like you thought you'd get.

And that's only the beginning. Wait until the tax agents get through with you. Your $100 grand will melt to less than half of that—and imagine how many opportunists will be knocking on your door during the coming year—looking for a handout.

Feel cheated? Of course. But buying tickets that don't win at all is even worse, because you waste your much-needed cash with no return at all. The only real winners of the lottery are those who never play. They don't lose any money on useless tickets, and the little that does finally go into the tax coffers helps to keep their tax at a lower rate.

God's Lottery

What if God ran a lottery? how about His tickets? and what would be the odds of winning eternal life?

It seems almost sacrilegious to mention God in the same sentence with the lottery, for He's saddened when people misuse His money⁽¹⁾

. But, of course, when we think of God's Lottery, we're using the lottery as a metaphor to illustrate the plan of salvation.