Foolish or Desperate?

Today I heard a pastor use the following as an illustration (my paraphrase):

An obviously poor couple comes into a convenience store and uses $20 to buy lottery tickets. What foolishness! What a foolish thing to do!

My first reaction was to ask this question: Is it foolishness or desperation? Because to call it foolishness implies that they are making a single isolated choice, to buy a ticket or not. In this case, they do in fact make a poor (or foolish) choice. The odds of winning are astronomically high and already poor people should be buying food not scratch-offs.

But what if we put that single choice in a larger context? What if we understand that there may be a larger social and economic (and possibly a few other adjectives) system that is at work making them (or keeping them) poor? What if instead of simply making a choice to in effect wager $20 on the lottery, they are trying by any means necessary to make life work for themselves? What if they feel like they've tried everything, that too many doors have been closed or shut in their faces and that they might as well take those long odds?

I'm just saying, there may be more here than a one-time decision to buy a ticket or not, and that's something that needs to be wrestled with. Especially by and in the church.