Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas

I’m in Las Vegas again, and I'm not very happy about it. To add insult to injury, I keep reminding myself that I have to come here one more time before we leave for Africa, returning in just two weeks for another event.

I’ve never been to Africa, and I don’t really have any idea of what to expect from Mhlosheni. But I’ve begun to think of Las Vegas as the anti-Mhlosheni, and of this bright noisy nervous city as the opposite of all I hope to find in Africa.

Las Vegas seems brutally, painfully superficial to me. Every sign, every image, every sound is designed to grab your attention, elicit a response, suck you in. Everything is noise and flashing lights and frenetic urgency, yet under all this cacophony is... nothing.

Whatever spirit the desert had in the past is buried over, entombed in acres and acres of concrete, drowned out. Like the one-acre Paiute Indian reservation that is supposed to exist somewhere in the middle of this city, the spirit is camouflaged and hidden.

Las Vegas is conspicuous, outrageous consumption. It sits at 2,000 feet in the Mojave Desert, and yet green trees and lawns are everywhere with Versailles-style fountains gushing cool water all day and night. On my jog last night near midnight I splashed through puddles that pooled beside over-watered hotel greens. A small jerboa-looking mouse ran across the trail to sip at one of these sudden puddles. He, at least, was thankful for the excess.

Everything in this city is given over to the Grand Cause of entertainment, and no other meaning or goal exists. Nothing matters but the pursuit of fun and the hope of easy money. Nothing matters but immediate gratification and self-fulfillment. When I walk through the flashing noisy smoky casinos I think of Nero’s Rome.

There are, I’m sure, soulful, passionate, sprit-possessed people in Las Vegas. But this city is designed to out-shout them and bury them. Even more than in most places, it really doesn’t want to hear them.

I can’t help but wonder what could be done with the water Las Vegas pours on its lawns and hotel landscaping and pools and fountains if it could all be shipped to Swaziland right now. I can’t help but wonder how much more of this precious life-giver Las Vegas uses than all of Swaziland, an entire country with the same population as this one desert city. I can’t help but wonder how much maize could be grown and children fed if we could only get it there.

I know that I tend to oversimplify things. Las Vegas isn’t any more inherently “evil” than Swaziland is a beacon of “good” in the world. But each one is a symbol to me. One is a symbol of man’s dreams run amok, unchecked and self-serving and ruthless. One is a symbol of God’s dreams, praying that we will step in and answer his call and look to the welfare of our brothers.

And each of us is asked, as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, What dream will you follow?