Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

It is amazing how the no gambling rule extended to other things. There were several members at the congregation I grew up in that got their noses out of joint over the youth group playing card games. It might lead to gambling of course.

Dixie_Amazon wrote:It is amazing how the no gambling rule extended to other things. There were several members at the congregation I grew up in that got their noses out of joint over the youth group playing card games. It might lead to gambling of course.

As a child, I was yelled at after church by an old biddie for handing a deck of cards to a friend. He had left them at my house or something. Her point: you shouldn't have gambling instruments in "God's house."

Interesting how the church building is "just a building" when you need to prove something to a Catholic but is "God's house" when a kid wants to bring a deck of cards to a friend.

Lev

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zeek wrote:I will never forget the time when the Sunday Night crowd of a little congregation was invited to one of the more affluent member's home after services for a get together. We met in their huge finished basement which happened to be their family room. It had a pool table; so, the men started playing pool. Everything was fine until one old biddy happened to look up and see the preacher shooting pool. She made the awfulest scene. I can still her wailing "the rest of them can gamble their lives away if they want to but I won't have my preacher gambling!" There was no gambling going on. Her husband tried to hush her up but she wouldn't have it. Needless to say that ended the pool playing and pretty much the evening.

Now that's funny, and utterly pathetic!

That's just strange -
Now on cards - all the time I was growing up,the only cards we had in the house were things like Old Maid. Regular playing cards were known as 'the Devil's Bible' and we didn't have any in the house (this was a severe problem when I went to college and took a statistics class: the professor kept using 'a typical card deck' for examples, and I didn't have a clue what was IN a typical card deck - didn't know what a suit was, didn't know what the face cards were, didn't know how many cards were there, didn't know - of course - the names of any particular 'hands'...it was a disaster).

anyway - after I was pretty much grown, some of the 'ladies of the congregation' learned to play bridge, and after that, card decks were fine - as long as they were for playing bridge.


I don't know how to play bridge either, but I can manage a few hands of Draw Poker.

Lev wrote:

Struggler wrote:Of course, we must not forget that we are not commanded to gamble.

That's right: rule of silence.

That's right....silence of the scriptures!!

Struggler, you should be an elder. I hereby submit your name for consideration.

If the church ladies play bridge, the next thing you know it'll be poker and blackjack.

From there, the green bean casseroles diminish, and finally go extinct.

Ivy wrote:If the church ladies play bridge, the next thing you know it'll be poker and blackjack.

From there, the green bean casseroles diminish, and finally go extinct.

Not the green bean casseroles!

First, they came for the potato salads, and I said nothing for I do not eat potato salad...

My grandfather, generally a reasonable man, forbade his children from playing cards or having cards in the house. I stayed at their home once as a child with a set of other cousins, and they had brought along a pack of cards and were intent on teaching several of us how to play spades. I'd never played any cards other than Go Fish at someone else's home. My grandfather didn't know about the deck being there until my oldest cousin absent-mindedly left the cards ON TOP OF THE LIVING ROOM BIBLE. Sparks flew, and we all were spanked, whether we'd played card games or not.

We were strictly forbidden to gamble or and much limited on even playing games that were too obviously gambling games. However we would often have a few hands of 21 maybe if for nothing else than to show the pointless nature of expecting to win against the house. But what I found odd was that games that included BS or "bluffing" were OK. Horseshoes and darts and such games of "getting closer" were allowed even though they were obviously related to passing time while drinking and gambling.

Of course Twister was really forbidden but it did look like fun on TV...especially around Christmas time when we got to see endless commercials and shows depicting things we would never do like sing a song, open a card, or give a gift...that was all for them dirty ignorant papist pagans.