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The following is by Brian Snider, bksnider@gmail.com:
You can never take things seriously once you begin to laugh about them and put them in a comedic light, and we have seen an explosion of comedy in this country in the last several decades.
It really got underway in the 70s with Steve Martin, who was the first comedian to sell out large concert venues, then Saturday Night Live came along, which just celebrated 40 years. Now we have the Comedy Channel, comedy clubs, etc. comedy on YouTube and on Facebook.
There is nothing sacred in this laughing society. We mock the president on the late night shows. We mock sin. We mock death. We mock everything.
Well-known funny guys from the 40s, 50s and 60s probably numbered in the dozens. Today, any person on the street would probably recognize comedians in the hundreds if not higher.
I will never forget an interviewer asking Steve Martin in the late 70s if comedy was going to be the next rock and roll in popularity, and it’s really not too far behind.
Now, we get our news from comedians like Jon Stewart. Wise guys like Stephen Colbert skewer traditional values and have played a huge role in making traditionalists look like idiots. The looniest character on any sitcom is always the religious nut (e.g., The Simpsons). We have cartoons that laugh at Jesus (South Park); comedians who are openly gay (Ellen Degeneres); comedians who mock Jesus on the cross (Sam Kinison).
We have comedians who mock the very idea of faith, like George Carlin: “Religion easily has the best ##### story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man . . . living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of 10 specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.”
We are laughing our way to hell.
I’m sure a significant volume of traffic on Facebook is simply people forwarding funny videos and stuff that wastes our time and causes us to laugh at things we should be taking seriously.
Now, as you point out, emergents are in the comedy business. And the people who read that tripe will never take those subjects seriously if they are laughing at his blasphemy. They have turned the whole Bible into one big joke.
There is a reason the Bible is not a book of levity. Eternity is no laughing matter.
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