Psssst! Guess What?

Hey everyone,

I have the best bit of juicy gossip for you.
You'll never believe it!

The Bible has a lot to say about gossip.{g} Here are a few choice morsels:

LEV 19:16 "'Do not go about spreading slander among your people. "

PRO 16:28 A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends.

PRO 26:20 Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.

MAT 12:36 But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.

1 TI 3:11 In the same way, their wives are to be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything.

1 PE 2:1 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.

1 PE 3:10 For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.

What on earth is Dorothy doing? Is she going to preach to us about gossip? Not really. I *am* going to think about it here now on the blog. You can stay and think about it with me, if you like. {g}

Okay, we all know gossip is wrong. We know it can be destructive. And we probably all think we know what gossip is. But I'm not sure we do. Here are some examples I've been thinking about.

Prayer Groups
When a prayer groups starts off with a member sharing about someone else's troubles before praying for them, is that gossip? If it's, 'Sue has been diagnosed with cancer and has asked us to pray for her,' it seems to me that's not gossip. For a start, it was disclosed with Sue's full consent. If it's, 'Gerry's wife has left him and taken their child and they are now in a women's shelter', with a knowing look which you know will be interpreted as, 'Gerry drinks and has abused his wife,' I think that crosses the line into dangerous territory. Because I've seen this too often in prayer groups, I no longer participate in them.

Friendships
Sharing someone else's happy news is so tempting. 'Ben and Sara are getting married! Yay!' Or, 'Julie's expecting a baby!' We love to do it. It make us happy. But even though it's happy news, we need to think about our motives for sharing it. Is it a desire for self-aggrandisement (I was the first to know and I am telling you because you are not in the special circle of 'knowers') which is appealing to us? Or are we attempting to purchase friendship with someone by offering a confidence, the way a submissive dog will offer up a bone to a more dominant dog? I know it's a horrible comparison. But it's one I was forced to reflect painfully on a few years back. I found my motives to be ugly, even though the news I shared was joyful.

Email
How many times have you been fooled by an email which has circulated the internet? We see something in black and white and we are persuaded it must be true, especially, when we have a vested interest in it being true. When we want to believe something, that makes us vulnerable to deception. Even if the email is plausable, we need to stop, consider the harm that it would do if we believed it or worse, passed it on to others, without first checking the truth, as far as we are able. Check out Snopes Urban Legends site. You will be amazed at the number of entries. For example, a recent email, stating that UK schools were being told to drop the study of the Holocaust from the History curriculum, caused untold damage to the country's reputation. Shortly before this email surfaced and was so eagerly passed on, our government had announced its intention to fund the sending of at least one pupil from every secondary school in the country to visit Auschwitz so that the Holocaust would *never* be forgotten. Yet the world, it seems, was so intent on believing the story in the email that the UK government was forced into making a public statement denying it. The first time in history that our government felt forced to deny an email rumour. I don't expect it will be the last.

Print
Surely, we are all taught early on in school (or homeschool) that not everything in print is true. Yet, we so often believe the newspaper headlines. Worse than the newspapers even, are the gossip magazines. My hair salon is full of them. {g} Photos of celebrities in compromising situations are plastered all over the front cover. Just a peek at the covers should be enough for us to hear God screaming the word 'Gossip' at us. I take a book now to read in the hairdressers. I don't want to be tempted to look to see someone's cosmetic surgery gone wrong or how they are struggling to lose their baby belly. Or how they have slept with another woman's husband.

I think that we women are particularly vulnerable to this sin. God made us gregarious and loquacious. It's true! We like to gather and connect through talk. It's how we bond and form friendships and forge community. And our ability to do that has enormous value for society. But we're also vulnerable to deception, as all humans are, so we have the potential to believe and then pass on highly destructive words. Let our words be full of life, affirming and encouraging those we encounter. Lord, teach us how to do this.

Before anyone starts to think I am some kind of saint in avoiding gossip, I should say I am not. This has been an area of tremendous struggle for me since becoming a Christian. Perhaps because of my background as a particularly powerless child, I grew up viewing information (especially 'inside information') as the currency of power. I used my knowledge to try to increase my status. Since becoming a Christian I've pleaded for help from God in this area. God has helped me. He has also widened my understanding of what the definition of gossip is. I hope that by writing these thoughts down, I'll be helping someone else in their struggles.

TIT 2:3 Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.