Welcome to Breakpoint, daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of Unchanging Truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

This year, gamblers were predicted to spend $16 billion betting on the Super Bowl.

Now, for perspective, that's about 35 times what it cost to build the stadium in Phoenix where the

game was played. Now that sports betting is legal in those states, the industry is in many ways

bigger than the sports themselves. It's already changed the way sports are played and especially

watched as the bets get weirder and weirder. Gamblers watching this year's Super Bowl, for

example, could bet on how long the national anthem would last and what color Gatorade would be poured

on the winning team's coach. A recent piece of the Atlantic Matthew Loftus argued that America has

gone, quote, too far in legalizing vice. Putting to some research, at least 50 percent of gambling

revenue in the US is from people who meet the criteria of problem gambler. The organization

supposed to help the National Council on Problem Gambling is funded by the gambling industry itself.

Whether the government should limit individual choice is a very difficult question to answer,

involves numerous variables. Abraham Kipers idea of sphere sovereignty asserts that God created

different aspects of life and culture with their own authorities so that they could flourish for

the glory of God and the good of people. The authorities function best when they do not overstep

into another sphere. However, if a particular authority fails, another must step in. For example,

God gave the authority over children to parents, not the state. When the state has to step in,

something's gone wrong. Now, these lines, of course, can get quite blurry,

generally speaking, the argument against governmental involvement in what we would call vice,

like gambling or recreational drugs, is that people should keep authority over their own choices,

as long as they're not in danger to others. Although this is a good principle per se,

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