Joel Stein is one satirical writer whose columns appeared on the LA Times until the newspaper's recent cutback, and now he writes for TIME magazine on occasion. One recent column there was about his experience as a one-off comedian at Saddleback Church's Improv Program: http://www.time.com/time/
As typical with his style of writing, he uses his sharp tongue and quick wit to make cynical comments and poke fun at his subject of ridicule, which, in this instance, is the simpleton evangelical Christians whose lack of real-world knowledge and sophistication makes them seem gullible, unfun, and borderline dumb.
I once heard someone say that it takes a simple mind to believe in Christianity, and that's probably why America as a country has the highest percentage of Christian population among the industrialized nations, for Americans are mostly simple minded people.
Yep, that's why the much secularized Europeans and some high-brow intellectuals look down on the religious prudes here with sneers because they think they know better than the latter about the real world out there.
Do they?
Here is what A. W. Tozer (1897-1963) has to say on the subject of what is really real and what is not in his book "The Pursuit of God":
There are those who love to poke fun at the plain man's idea of reality. They are the idealists who spin endless proofs that nothing is real outside of the mind. They are the relativists who like to show that there are no fixed points in the universe from which we can measure anything. They smile down upon us from their lofty intellectual peaks and settle us to their own satisfaction by fastening upon us the reproachful term 'absolutist.' The Christian is not put out of countenance by this show of contempt. He can smile right back at them, for he knows that there is only One who is Absolute, that is God. But he knows also that the Absolute One has made this world for man's uses, and, while there is nothing fixed or real in the last meaning of the words (the meaning as applied to God), for every purpose of human life we are permitted to act as if there were. And every man does act thus except the mentally sick. These unfortunates also have trouble with reality, but they are consistent; they insist upon living in accordance with their ideas of things. They are honest, and it is their very honesty that constitutes them a social problem.
The idealists and relativists are not mentally sick. They prove their soundness by living their lives according to the very notions of reality which they in theory repudiate and by counting upon the very fixed points which they prove are not there. They could earn a lot more respect for their notions if they were willing to live by them; but this they are careful not to do. Their ideas are brain-deep, not life-deep. Wherever life touches them they repudiate their theories and live like other men.
The sincere plain man knows that the world is real. He finds it here when he wakes to consciousness, and he knows that he did not think it into being. It was here waiting for him when he came, and he knows that when he prepares to leave this earthly scene it will be here still to bid him good-bye as he departs. By the deep wisdom of life he is wiser than a thousand men who doubt.
He hears the sounds of nature and the cries of human joy and pain. These he knows are real. He lies down on the cool earth at night and has no fear that it will prove illusory or fail him while he sleeps. In the morning the firm ground will be under him, the blue sky above him and the rocks and trees around him as when he closed his eyes the night before. So he lives and rejoices in a world of reality.
I think it all comes down to that tree-of-knowledge vs tree-of-life analogy, Mr. know-it-all vs the down-to-earther, the forever-seeker vs the stickler, the prideful vs the grateful, that live within everyone of us every day.
May the latter overcome the former day by day.
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the only probable explanation is that I was made for another world." -- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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