By David Wilkinson
The Rev. Peter de Villiers got an answer to his prayers: he won the lottery. Some of his parishioners and denominational kinsmen, however, aren’t celebrating the pastor’s good fortune.
My wife has her doubts, too.
According to The Scottish Sun, the pastor of a United Free Church congregation in Wishaw in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, recently took home a £30,000 jackpot as winner of the Scotland’s “People’s Postcode Lottery.” That’s the equivalent of about 48,387 U.S. dollars.
Seems de Villiers is now somewhere between a rock and a hard place. The rock would be the staunchly anti-gambling position of the United Free Church with which his church is affiliated. The hard place would be what the pastor should do with his winnings.
The position of the United Free Church is clear. A report from its Ethics and Current Affairs Committee notes the denomination has “consistently condemned gambling as an activity that appeals to our selfish natures.” The report adds that “the committed Christian should not take part in any gambling activity and should not play the National Lottery.”
Oops.
de Villiers, on the other hand, told the Sun it’s a matter of “the individual’s conscience. I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong.”
Which leads to my wife. Whenever the (purely hypothetical) question “What would you do if you won the lottery?” comes up, Melanie always says something like this: “Well, the only thing worse than winning the lottery would be to win anything less than about 10 million dollars.”
Melanie never has and never will buy a lottery ticket. She doesn’t even cotton to charity raffles. But she does have a sense of humor.
And, for that matter, her logic, even tongue-in-cheek, is spot on. Being a good, lifelong Baptist, if she were to win the lottery, she would tithe her winnings to our church. Wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.
She’s not only principled; she’s practical. The way she figures it, a tithe on $10 million would likely silence any objections about the church accepting ill-gotten treasure for the Lord’s work.
On the other hand, winning something like $48,387 would be anything but an answer to prayer. If she had sneaked off and bought a lottery ticket, discovered the good news that the winning number matched her ticket, and then got the bad news of a payout something way south of $10 million, her only dilemma would be as follows: Do I tear the ticket up and never breathe a word (except to the Lord who knows all things anyway) or figure out a way to slip the ticket anonymously to a single mother working two jobs and praying every night for enough money to keep the lights on and milk in the frig?
As for de Villiers, he and his wife were wearing big smiles in the photo atop the Sun’s story. They had been praying– and paying about £50 a month — for a winning ticket. They plan to spend their winnings to buy a house in their native South Africa.
Meanwhile, an official for the United Free Church plans to sit down for a talk with the pastor. I reckon it’s possible to win and lose the lottery at the same time.
Actually, I hope Rev. and Mrs. de Villiers do get their house in South Africa. That’s about 6,000 miles from Scotland.
Which sounds about right.