My (slightly humorous) take on why Christians are so annoying.

I understand the annoyance for God's people, I really do. We are the veritable "people of the cloth" or the "Frozen Chosen" as the "reformed" Presbyterians are so named. I generally roll with that group for some reason. Prior to my conversion I was Episcopalian or, as my friend Rory called the denomination: "Catholic-lite." Apparently we had all the ceremony and only half of the guilt! It sounded like an ad espousing the benefits of Margarine over butter. We love our labels and others love to label us. We usually seem to get labeled in direct accordance with our hypocrisy.

Anyhoo, I came face to face with this Christian hypocrisy my first year as a believer. I was invited to a beach gathering up in LA with the regional church and was very excited to go. For reasons that will become apparent later, I did not get much sleep that night. We had a nice hour and a half long drive up to the beach house where I was lulled into a false sense of serenity. I won a huge container full of Gummy Bears when I guessed closest to the proper amount, won a Bible verse locating round against all odds, swam in the ocean amongst breaker waves that literally crushed my body into the sand and rolled me up the embankment like a ball of limp, masticated noodles, drained fluids from my nose for half an hour after sand burning my face all the way up the shore, oozed into a fabulous leather chair with little mechanical massaging rollers and ultimately fell asleep. Big mistake!

With those rollers buffing relaxing patterns into my musculature I was like a bittersweet square of soft imported Dutch chocolate left on a hot car hood in the middle of the Death Valley desert; I melted. My body sank into every nook and cranny of that chair and time died to me. I woke up half an hour later to the sound of poorly concealed snickering that took place behind hands that were pushed up so hard against mouths that their teeth were almost extractable from behind their ears.

It seems that I had been drooling upon my heaving bosom for the duration of my false-safety, sleep induced coma. Oh, it wasn't just a little drool and it wasn't just a small wet mark; it was foamy white around the edges and encompassed up to half of my now embarrassingly dripping chest. My shame was so thick around me it could have been cut with a chainsaw! I gave a couple of nervous laughs while everyone around me guffawed with open mouths and flapping tongues. They flopped as fish out of water and made a similar, though more guttural sound.

I wiped the last lonely strands of spittle from my sopping chin and made my walk of shame out into the sun to dry my saturated shirt. It was a welcome heat and much more natural than the fire that burned with the heat of a thousand suns within the tips of my ears. Alas, to have had a friend willing to warn me against my own lack of classiness! I would almost have rather walked amongst the best looking women in the world with my fly unzipped for an entire day. I would have at least had a great excuse for being clueless!

I pose this challenge to you believers out there (and a last convenient label): The next time you have the chance to save a brother from embarrassment ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?"