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Ballot Recommendations Summary Measure 51 Measure 52

Measure 52
Authorizes State Lottery Bond Program To Finance Public School Projects

Recommendation:
No

Debt, gambling, and atheistic government schools - this unholy trinity is the subject of this referral from the Oregon Legislature. Measure 52 seeks to provide yet more money for the current system of atheistic government (public) schools, and to provide that money from bonds backed and financed by future lottery earnings (Definition of a bond: A certificate of debt issued by a government or corporation guaranteeing payment of the original investment plus interest by a specified future date).

This Measure should be opposed for three reasons, yea even four.

First, it seeks to further indebt the State of Oregon. While debt is a way of life in America today, Scripture repeatedly and clearly negatively characterizes most forms of debt (Deut 28:12,13 with 28:43,44; Prov. 22:7; Rom. 13:8). Debt is not sin, but usually (not always) results from the sin of covetousness - desiring and then obtaining through unrighteous means what God has not provided with righteous means. In Measure 52, debt and gambling are the unrighteous means to obtain the result that God will not provide - stable godless schools.

Second, Measure 52 seeks additional funding for atheistic government schools. Civil government’s job is to punish evil-doers (Rom. 13:4) and praise the righteous (2 Peter 2:14). Atheistic schools accomplish neither of these two God-given purposes of the civil magistrate. Worse, these schools actually are destructive of true knowledge. They assert that knowledge is ethically neutral, which it is not (Proverbs 15:26, 24:9; 2 Cor. 10:5; Rom. 1:18-21). They say that the world can be known and understood without reference to its Creator- which it cannot. Accordingly, atheistic government schools manifest the bad fruit of such a foul tree - sexual promiscuity, drug use, violence, and a loss of rationality and academic performance.

Atheistic government schools should not be enriched or reformed, they should be abandoned, then abolished. As one man once commented “How are you going to reform public schools? Bounce the rubble?” Home and private schoolers have been footing the bill for their own children’s education as well as paying taxes for many years. Perhaps the one solution no one is suggesting to the government school funding crisis needs to be raised here - - it is time for the rest of the parents of Oregon to pay directly for the education of the children God has entrusted to them.

Third, it accomplishes these two “goals” by the use of the lottery - monopolistic government gambling. Gambling appears to fly in the face of various Scriptural precepts. The Bible tells us that diligence is God’s normal secondary means by which men are to acquire wealth, but gamblers seek wealth quickly through games of chance (Prov. 28:19-22).

Wealth obtained through labor endures, but wealth obtained by means such as gambling is transitory (Prov. 13:11). The Bible warns against quickly obtaining wealth (Prov. 20:21) but quick acquisition of large sums of money is the primary motivation for gambling. While God may well grant us material blessings (which we should be thankful for and enjoy), we are specifically told not to seek to be rich (Prov. 23:4) and to be content with what God has provided by means of our labor (1 Tim. 6:6-11).

Gambling leaves in its wake a diversion of funds from righteous financial transactions to corrupt uses, an increase of crime and corruption, a group of men who are “addicted” (dominated by their sinful actions - see Gen. 4:7 and Rom. 6:12) and a growing number of broken families.

The hypocrisy of our state and federal magistrates attacking demon tobacco and yet promoting the far more morally deadly gambling, feeding as it does greed and envy, is monumental. How about some liability lawsuits against the Oregon Lottery Commission?

We are in the unenviable position of having our civil government actually tempt men and women, boys and girls, to engage in the specific actions the Scriptures quoted above (and many more) clearly condemn.

But yea, there is a fourth reason to oppose Measure 52 - state-enforced monopolies. Not only do the citizens of the State of Oregon have the audacity to promote gambling, they insist that the civil government exercise a state monopoly on this supposedly victimless activity. Measure 52 brings together the unbiblical state monopolies of education and gambling, and throws in debt to boot.

Frankly, one is tempted to vote for such a proposal as Measure 52. If we could shift the tax burden for atheistic government schools from the honest taxpayer to those who engage in gambling, perhaps one would rethink this Measure. The schools always have their hands out, and the gamblers are always sticking their coins in the perpetually open hand of the lottery machine. A match made in…well - you know. Add debt, the “spirit” that brings these two peas in a pod together, and you have Measure 52.

But of course, this Measure will not reduce your tax burden one iota. Like the proverbial horseleach’s daughters of Proverbs 30:15, the government schools always cry, “Give, give.” They are like “the grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, ‘It is enough’” (Proverbs 30:16). Like them, the government schools are things “that are never satisfied, …things that say not, ‘It is enough.’”

Well, we can say enough. We can say it by voting No on Measure 52.

This voters' guide produced by Parents Education Association, PAC.