Sarcastic Jesus

Have you ever known a message to be taken the wrong way? As most of us have realized at this point, media such as text and email lack the ability to properly convey tone and/or emotion. We say one thing, but our recipient reads something else altogether. If I send someone a question and the response is "nope", depending on my state of mind, some questions may enter my mind. Why are they being short with me? Are they ticked off? What could I have done? Of course, the recipient may be upset with me about something, but there are other possibilities as well. Perhaps, for instance, he is very busy at work and only had time to type out a quick response.

I have found that we tend to do this with Scripture. Often, we make an assumption about the tone we think Paul, Moses, or even Jesus is using when we read verses from the Bible. One of the tones that we commonly assume Jesus is speaking with is sarcasm. I believe this comes from many of us being sarcastic ourselves, so we assume Jesus to be the same way! Sarcasm is condescending. It is also a good indicator of anger, so when we apply this tone to Jesus' words, we view Jesus as constantly speaking angrily with a condescending voice to us. Jesus did not always speak gently, but He did not constantly speak out of anger or disgust either.

It is easy for us to assume God is constantly angry with us due to our imperfections. However, Scripture is clear that, through Christ, God fully accepts and forgives us. He is slow to anger and does not ever withhold one bit of His love from us. God is not anxiously waiting for opportunities to strike His children down with a lightning bolt...or with a witty, condescending comment. What would happen if we began taking just a moment to consider He may be speaking with a very different tone than what we first assumed when reading about Him?