Gossip

Like many of you, I love a good story.  Someone recently recommended a John Grisham novel to me, and I told him that I need to get my wife’s permission before I can pick up any good novel, because I have a difficult time stopping once I start reading.  When I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Sam when he was younger, I would read a chapter or two to him before bed, and then read for hours into the night after he was asleep because I was so drawn into the story and wanted to find out what happened next.

Stories can be a wonderful compliment to our Christian walk.  In fact, our entire faith rests on the story of God’s kindness to rebels through the sending of His Son, who came to live the life we should have lived, and die the death we deserved to die on the cross.  Our call as Christians is to continually retell this story of the cross, the Gospel story, to the world.  We are to be spreading the word of this story to our children, to one another, and to the world.  Our telling of stories and relating to them to understand our world better is one of the ways which reflects our being created in God’s image.

Not all story telling is good, however.  The Bible very clearly condemns gossip. (Rom 1:29; 2 Cor. 12:20; 1 Tim. 5:13)  As I was looking at the word that is translated as “gossip,” I learned that alternate interpretations of the word are “talebearer” or “whisperer.”  What is condemned is the telling of stories that hurt other people or in ways that cast a bad or deceptive shadow on them.  Politics are full of whisperers, who assist campaigns from behind the scenes by disparaging opposing candidates with lies and half-truths.  Although storytelling is something that reflects our being made in God’s image, we also must recognize that sin has marred and broken our ability to properly reflect God’s image and gossip is one of the ways that a good thing goes bad.

Sadly, our response to gossip is often to propagate it.  While the Bible teaches us to take our concerns directly to a brother or sister who has offended us, we tend to sinfully take it to everyone BUT the person at issue.  In my own life, I have been both the offender and the victim of gossip over the years.  Gossip is a cancer to a church body that often grows into conflict and dissension that is harmful to everyone involved.

Instead of spreading gossip, or even just ignoring gossip, our correct response should be to confront gossip. If someone is telling you a story about a person who is not present that reflects negatively on the person or is titillating because of its confrontational nature, you should ask if they have talked to the person about this directly.  If the answer is no, you should REFUSE to talk further of the matter until the person being talked about is present.  If the person who is gossiping will not talk to the object of their gossip, then we need to go to the person being gossiped about and get the real story as soon as possible.

I want to invite anyone who feels that I have wronged them by gossip, or any other offense, to come to me directly to talk about it.  This is not an easy thing to do, but it is a godly thing to do.  We all need to be more courageous to choose to end whatever gossip may be present in our church body, so that ultimately it is the redemptive story of Jesus’ death and resurrection that is being told, and not useless, sinful tales about one another.