Our Pluralistic Society Makes Our War against Jueteng Even More Difficult

It’s been a long time and we are still losing the battle against jueteng. The past administrations tried all of its efforts to stop jueteng, but unfortunately they failed because some government official, past and present, are benefiting from it. Which makes me wonder: Why is it that we lose on this war? Which makes this battle even more difficult and complicated to stop?

The reason, I guess, is that our view with gambling in general is very pluralistic. For example, jueteng is illegal while Small Town Lottery (STL, which is similar to jueteng) is legal. By that, we are difficult to differentiate between what legal and illegal because they are both the same. Let’s say video karera, saklaan, and other forms of street gambling are illegal while casinos, lotto, bingo, horse race betting, and cockfighting are legal. See, there is no distinction of what is wrong and what is right. You make law that will make an illegal legal, or even use the profits from gambling to help assist government projects. That’s very pluralistic. And sad to say, we are living in a pluralistic society, as my former teacher in values education told us.

There’s a clear Biblical message in I Timothy 6:10 that says:

For the LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Why there is gambling? It’s because people love money these days. Even worse, people love money when money is earned without effort and no hard work. Because of this people who are addict to gambling wandered from God and being subjected to different kinds of grievances like loss of job, loss of love ones, broken relationships, and emotional disturbances.

Yet our, human government, apart from God, set exceptions to make gambling good by making it as a fund generator for their government projects, instead of running over tax evaders and smugglers. If that was so, why are still in our bleak situation. And it’s to funny to realize that while the gambler helps the government in their social programs for the poor, his own family is being forgotten.

There are also rumors that some government official wants to legalize jueteng. This kind of suggestion could make things worse. They are raising the white flag if they continue to insist on it. If they watch Face To Face on TV5, we could see families and friendships being broken by gambling. Would that bother them to think for a minute?

So at the end of this commentary, I would say that if we want to abolish jueteng, we need to change our pluralistic thinking on gambling. If we don’t change our pluralistic stance, then all of its efforts to fight jueteng will be useless.