A Mysterious Stranger turned up on Fox News recently with eyes ablaze and a sword occasionally darting from his mouth. He wasn't in a good mood:

"If any one would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," the Stranger said, looking into the camera before directing a withering gaze at his pompous interrogator. The temperature of the studio began rising a degree a minute.

The talk show host responded with an intimidating glare of his own. "Look, I suspect most Americans don't have time for an open-ended commitment like that," he said. "Besides, somebody has to stick around to protect the integrity of Christmas from political progressives, civil libertarians, secular Jews and deluded black people who sit around lighting Kwanzaa candles for nine days straight."

"I came not to call the righteous, but sinners," the Stranger said indignantly.

"Sure, that's your prerogative, of course, but you don't know these people like I do," the interrogator said. "These people are positively un-American in their hatred for what you stand for. Trust me. I'm savvier about these things than you are."

"But I say to you, 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,'" the Stranger said.

"What? You must be out of your pointed little skull," the man from Fox News said. "Love these people? Sorry, but I don't have a martyr complex. That's not healthy for people in my profession," he said, mopping the sweat from his brow. "You hit me and I'm going to hit you back harder than you've ever been hit. My old man didn't raise no sissies."

The Stranger looked plaintively at the camera and said, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the Earth?"

"Faith? Let me tell you about faith," the talk show host said. "I have faith in spades. It's bubbling out of me. I have faith in this president. I have faith in the goodness of the American people. I have faith in the rightness of our cause, whatever it is. And I have faith that defies what is intellectually fashionable at the time."

"You lack one thing," the Stranger said. "Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

There was an uncomfortable silence, followed by the Fox News host clearing his throat.

"Excuse me, but you're sounding more like a socialist nut job than someone with your resume ought to," he said. "Do I have to tell you about the evils of income redistribution and the envy, jealousy and laziness that it spawns?"

"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's," the Stranger said, his impatience growing. The temperature in the studio hovered at 103 degrees. Stage hands fainted.

"Look, all of this is fine in the abstract," the Fox News host said, as sweat poured down his face. "But you have nothing to say about the ACLU types who want to take creches down from the public square, do you? What's a bigger threat to Christianity: people who don't buy into your fleece-the-rich scheme or those who want to remove every reference to God from the Christmas season?"

"Get behind me, Satan. For you are not on the side of God, but of men," the Stranger said, standing abruptly.

"I think I know where you're going with this," the host said. "But let's be reasonable, OK? With only a few days left in the heaviest shopping season of the year, we can't afford to say anything to impede the usual bacchanalian rush to Christmas. Consumer confidence is wobbly. If Americans start asking tough questions about what Christmas is really supposed to be about, fourth-quarter earnings will take a dive and that will lead to social anarchy, comprende?"

The Stranger threw up his hands. "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?"

"Dude," the cable news host said with a raffish grin. "We work for Fox News. We sold our souls to the devil a long time ago. Now shut up!"