"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it."

~Thomas Carlyle

Maybe I've read too much David Foster Wallace, but I spend a lot of time thinking about how our culture gives primacy to humor-as-superiority over sincerity. We have all kinds of negative words or people who are deeply involved with certain ideas--nerd, geek, fanatic. The worst we can come up with for funny people is goof or class clown. This is certainly not a diatribe against humor, but sometimes I worry that we're terrified of being seen as in earnest. I think that fear removes something sacred and grounding, just as lack of humor removes something uplifting.