To become a Christian is to accept an extra dimension to life. From the Christian's point of view the notable thing about the unbeliever's world is how much "smaller" it is. The unbeliever is imprisoned in a decaying universe.

Imagine you took a child to the theater to see some tragedy like, say, Hamlet, at the end of which the stage is littered with corpses. And suppose you had difficulty comforting the child afterward, so distressed was he at the spectacle of the deaths. "But the man who played Hamlet is not really dead," you explain. "He is an actor. He also lives a life outside a theater. He has a wife and family and, far from being dead, he is probably now at home with them enjoying a late supper."

If there is one word the Christian secretly wants to use to describe the unbeliever's outlook, it is "literal" ... like the child who takes the play for reality.