One of my favorite people once said in a sermon, “Sarcasm is a spiritual gift and I have it.”
I do, too.
It’s been part of the way I talk and the way I laugh for years. I vividly remember a whole group of us in middle school who used “opposite talk” for everything.
But through the years in ministry, there have been several occasions in which my sarcasm has wounded people. What I have thought was light-hearted or funny others have interpreted as painful or insulting. Sarcasm quickly becomes a weapon . . . even when it’s not meant that way.
So I have been trying to live out a principle: if there is any question of how someone will take a comment I think is funny, I probably shouldn’t say anything at all.
Because in the big picture, I want my words to heal and not to hurt.