Imagine a street corner, a folding table, a cardboard box with two slits, and a stranger seated at that table. He tells you to slip a dollar bill into the top slot and then withdraw ninety-four cents from the bottom slot. Worse yet, you do it…for hours, until he takes your last buck. Now dress that scenario in the glitter of a casino and ask yourself why any rational person would participate in such nonsense?
After our recent family reunion in Southern Utah, we drove to Las Vegas for the return flight to Arizona. McCarran International Airport is a fascinating study in human behavior. With a three-hour layover, my wife and I had ample time to observe the striking contrast between the arriving and departing passengers. We noticed that arriving passengers walked with an energetic quick-step, their faces etched with anticipation as they headed for the casinos with visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads. They were boisterous and giddy. By contrast, departing passengers were quiet, sullen and almost reclusive in their demeanor. Obviously not every passenger was a casino victim, but it is not a stretch to suggest that gambling losses were the source of many a frown. For those folks, the product did not live up to the packaging.
When greed is afoot, the natural man becomes euphoric in his childish quest to titillate the senses. Give a child one lick of an ice cream cone on a hot summer’s day and see if his first instinct is to beg for another. We often succumb to the allure of sugary calories so prevalent in want vs. need. One might ask: When is enough, enough? How many jet skis, motorcycles, golf clubs or new gadgets do we “need”? The more we acquire, the more we desire. This is why the Las Vegas casinos continue to have traction. Opulent environments cost millions to design and operate, fed by the glitz of greed. Like the arriving Las Vegas passengers, we sometimes race to the revolving door of “something for nothing” as a false escape from the dullness of our routines or the pain of problems. These so-called escapes can cause spiritual wounds. Sometimes it is easier to drape the towel over the mirror than to face our own reflection. But like the departing Las Vegas passengers, we are all eventually accountable for our actions. We must pay the piper and face ourselves.
Years ago while on court business, I passed by happy couples at the courthouse raising their right arms to the square to take the marriage oath. Four floors above them (and several years removed) divorcing couples crowded into the elevators. There, they berated their former spouses with hateful comments, their faces contorted with anger. Perhaps the demeanor of those departing the courthouse and those leaving the Las Vegas casinos springs from a common root: a failed quest for joy. In the case of the courthouse couples, many were doomed to divorce before they took their vows. While love without sacrifice may sell movie tickets, it doesn’t sustain marriages. In the case of the casino hopefuls, the lie of wealth without work is carnally pleasing, but still a lie.
An old fable suggests that heaven and hell are filled with an identical sumptuous feast. New arrivals to the feast soon discover their arms are unbendable due to long forks attached at the biceps which prevent reaching one’s own mouth. Those in hell try unsuccessfully to force the fork to their palate. As a result, they starve. Those in heaven, although burdened with the same stiff-forked arms, feed the person across the table from themselves. By sharing, they thrive.
In all worthy endeavors, sacrifice underpins success. The kind of euphoria we feel in the anticipation of new love or new toys is temporary. Once the toy or the blush of new love wears a bit, the joy can easily vanish. Love is not a hand in hand, but a wrinkled hand in hand. Likewise, greed, by definition, is a shortcut to failure because it cannot endure the light of sacrifice. Isaiah saw the kind of vanishing joy I witnessed at the courthouse and in Las Vegas. Said he: “…they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil” (Isaiah 9:3).
In all seasons of life, the harvest is seasonal and never guaranteed. Unlike the spent wishes for wealth, for power, for lust or for play, the only thing which truly endures is eternal life with God and the person we become in the process.
There is nothing wrong with wholesome recreation, but the casinos are not wholesome. And while new love is exciting; it is a first step to a more mature form of love. The euphoric joy in man’s harvest pales in comparison to the eternal joy that is only won on the buffeting currents and eddies of sacrifice. Show me a hard working man who earned his money by the sweat of his face, instead of the something-for-nothing clank of casino lucre. Show me a golden wedding anniversary inside a successful temple marriage and I’ll show you a couple who understand that love without sacrifice, like an opulent casino, is a delusion.
Separating want from need is a hallmark of discipleship. It brings peace, fosters service and blunts selfishness. Consider the stark contrast between temporary joy in man’s harvest versus the lasting, soul-filling joy in Christ. The experience of the Nephite saints in the presence of the resurrected Lord is instructive: “And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father” (3 Ne. 17:17). “But as it written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor.2:9).
