I’m a Hyper-Sensitive Christian

Two days after I turn 21 I’m sitting around a table cluttered with at least seven beer bottles. Three Coronas and four Heinekens. They’ve all got slivers of lime floating in the foam. A can of Pepsi is sitting in front of me, and I feel like an outcast. Having grown up in the church, I have a tremendous stigma associated with alcoholic beverages. It’s to the point of lunacy. Most people who’ve grown up in the church have this overblown defense mechanism for anything that can be remotely considered a sin. And it’s usually the trivial things. It’s evident when I assume that anyone who smokes or chews tobacco simply cannot be a Christian. It’s evident when a pastor gives a sermon about how husbands and wives relate and uses whatever awkward technical words he can to avoid saying “sex.”


I’m not saying we should all run out and have a drunken orgy and pass out the Marlboros afterward. I’m just saying there’s a lot of Christians who are hypersensitive. I’m one of them.

Hello. My name is Kevin Hendricks. And I’m a hypersensitive Christian.

HI KEVIN.

The church should definitely consider starting a support group for this kind of behavior. They could meet at the same time as the AA meetings, and if enough progress is made, they could meet together.

What really shocked me was how out of touch I felt. And it wasn’t peer pressure. I had no desire to drink. I just felt completely out of touch with people who should have been my peers. I was essentially having a cross cultural experience with people of my own age, race, and social status. Of all the things we had in common, we were still radically different. I complain about caffeine headaches, they complain about too high of a tolerance.

When a missionary needs practice with cross cultural experiences, we should just send them to the bar.

The really fun thing is the judgements the hypersensitive Christian makes. They’ll assume everyone sitting around the table sucking back beers are non-Christians. They’ll think it would be really cool to be a missionary to these people. They would actually think of it as missionary work, block off their Friday night to go to the bar and not drink. They’d heavily advertise the fact that they don’t drink, and the patrons would roll their eyes and order another one. When the night ended the missionary would become a taxi driver. Which is all well and good, but it would be nice if the designated drive was more than a missionary. It’d be nice if they were a friend.

And the hypersensitive Christian won’t understand this. They won’t understand that you can be a part of this crowd without giving into their outlook on life. You can sit at the table and actually put your holy lips to a smelly beer bottle. It won’t kill you. Your eyes don’t get misty at the taste of alcohol, and you don’t immediately tip over, stone drunk. I should know. Not that I’ve done it–I’m still too early in my 12 step program to actually have a beer. But I did steal a sip of a wine cooler, which is wussy beer. But I’ve seen others do it. They have a beer and hang out with this odd crowd. They don’t sacrifice any of what they believe, and they actually become friends with these people. You know what? They don’t even refer to them as “those people.” Talk about progress.

Sometimes we Christians need to understand that the world can’t exist in a bubble. We’ve done an excellent job at listening to half of everything Jesus said. We’ve made excellent disciples of Christians. We’ve built up a wonderful Christian empire. But Jesus also told us to go. You know what else? Jesus wasn’t afraid to have some alcohol either.

Hello. My name is Kevin Hendricks. And I’m a hypersensitive Christian.

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