I Have Something Sarcastic to Say

"For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." 
- Jesus, as quoted in Matthew 6:14-15, NIV

This is one of those verses that it seems like all the holy holy Christians skip.  I mean, if someone is mad at them, they pull this one out to remind their adversary that they are going to hell and cannot be forgiven because they are holding onto the past.  But, when it comes time to forgive someone else, no, they will not forgive, because to forgive (like Jesus told them to) would be to condone the behavior, and if they condoned sinful behavior that would betray the truth they hold so dear.

(This is the most sarcastic part. Are you ready?)

What's best is if you can find a way to be angry about something that someone did to someone else, then that, my friends, is (self)righteous anger, and we all know that (self)righteous anger has the tie-breaker over obedience to Christ.

(The sarcasm ends here.)

I understand why people don't believe what I believe. I totally get it. We claim to follow a Christ who spent his life teaching about forgiveness and love, and when we go into the church we often find a bunch of people who never do either one of those.  It's sad.  Nobody is perfect, of course, but we seem to be darn near perfect when it comes to keeping a record of wrongs and remembering to share the latest gossip we heard.  It's when it's time to do the stuff we never really wanted to do that we fall back on that "nobody's perfect" stuff.