Helping a brother fall

Today I learned of a situation involving someone I thought a lot of who had contributed knowingly to the fall of a brother.

John, a sales manager at a dealership where I got my start in the car business, is a young, bright and energetic, and doggedly loyal man. I thought a lot of him as he trained me to become self-sufficient in a very short period of time, and helped me get promoted to increased levels of responsibility and pay.

I have had a place in my heart for that young man, but today, I am afraid that may have changed. It seems another manager at the store, we'll call him Mike, had a gambling problem- a big one. Mike would bet on baseball games, for example, not only the winner, but the over/under, just about anything you can think of. And these weren't nickel and dime bets. These were $500/bet, so think $1,000-1,500 per game. He started by texting the bets to John who would place them with his bookie. As it turned out, Mike was not very good at betting. He lost. He lost a lot.

He also had another bad habit. Drinking. I know, it is hard to imagine a car sales professional that drinks, but he does. And when he does, like most other people that drink, he loses his inhibitions, and starts placing more bets. Crazier bets.

John, being the savvy business person he is, saw an opportunity. He started to cover Mike's bets. Then, he started sending one of the guys to the liquor store in the evening to pick up some alcohol, attempting to get Mike to open up more bad bets, suckering him in, if you will. And it worked.

In no time, Mike had run up over $25,000 in lost bets to the bookie, and more to John. See the problem yet?

It apparently got to the point where Mike was cashing in bonds for the money, still pursuing the elation of the elusive win. Again, Mike was not very good at the betting thing. In fact, he would probably have been better off betting against what his inclinations were (a reverse bet, if you will) since he lost so much. Better still, he would be better off altogether to give up both drinking and gambling.

To say I was disappointed in John would be an understatement. I was deeply saddened, in fact, disgusted that he would facilitate someone's fall like he did. Perhaps it is because I am a naive optimist, hoping and seeing the best in people, when in fact, too often the dark, ugly side is shown to our fellow man. What he did is akin to drinking in front of a recovering alcoholic, eating chocolate cake in front of an obese person trying to lose weight, or, well, you get the picture. It was bad enough to carry the bets himself, but to provide the liquor to loosen up his "mark" makes this even more reprehensible.

Because of his age (mid-20's), I know exactly what he would have said had I challenged him (and I would have if we were still working together). His response would have been something like: "I might as well take his money if he is going to throw it away." I can understand that, but it certainly is not right even in that light. People rob, steal, murder, etc., all the time, but it would be no less evil for you or me to commit any of a number of egregious sins.

Mitigating circumstances aside (if there could possible be any), his best course of action, from a fellowship standpoint, would have to be to have not offered to be the facilitator.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever had an experience in which you or someone you knew entered into a moral dilemma? I would love to hear from you.