Gossip

The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts. Proverbs 18:8 (NIV)

Gossip is so tasty – how we love to swallow it! Proverbs 18:8 (Good News Bible)

In everyday life there are few things we hate - and yet love - more than gossip. How so? We hate it when we are the victims (“How dare they say such things about me!”); we love it when we have an opportunity for  it ourselves (“Hey, had you heard that…?”).

Gossip can be broadly defined as “malicious talk”. I found myself thinking about it recently when I read that a politician’s ex-wife had written a book detailing the break-up of their marriage. I haven’t read it, nor will I, but it sounded very much like “dishing the dirt” on her former husband and various other people too. I bet it will “fly off the shelves” in its thousands. But just reading about it made me feel uncomfortable, even slightly grubby.

I’d better be careful, though. Am I in fact being self-righteous? Have I never gossiped myself? Oh, I’m afraid I have, not intending any harm (of course!), but being guilty all the same. When you realise that you are guilty it’s then that you also realise that you are not in fact the very nice person you like to present yourself as, but… well, really rather nasty. That, I’m afraid, is me.

The Bible nowhere gives us extended teaching about gossip, though James 3:1-12, about the tongue in a more general sense, comes pretty close. It’s a frightening warning, using the graphic image of the forest fire, easy to start and tragically hard to stop. No, we have to pick up little Bible snippets here and there, not least in Proverbs, from which I have taken the verse at the top.

I’ve culled together some of the basic features of gossip under three headings; they’re a challenge to me, and I hope they might be to you as well.

First, gossip is no trivial matter.

I used to think the words of Jesus in Matthew 12:36-37 seemed rather  exaggerated; but in fact they bring home to us the sheer importance of wrong words in general, and that obviously includes gossip: “I tell you that everyone will have to give account for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned”. All right, actions may speak louder than words, as the saying goes, and forgiveness is always there for us when we repent;  but let’s not allow ourselves to water those solemn words down too much.

Second, gossip is frighteningly addictive.

That comes across in the verse at the top, where the writer compares it to a tasty meal. It’s tempting, and like all temptations it threatens to ensnare us until we can’t get free. We all know how a harmless-seeming habit can threaten to dominate our lives. When we gossip we not only harm the person we gossip about, we also harm ourselves, poisoning our own personalities. God has given to each of us the responsibility to recreate that personality in the likeness of Jesus, and even an occasional giving in to temptation - any temptation - will slowly harden into a fixed habit unless we make a decisive effort to stamp on it.

Is it time all of us had a look at our habits? Are we slowly, quietly destroying ourselves?

Third, gossip does more harm and damage than we can imagine.

Proverbs 16:28 tells us that “a perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends”. That, again, is the NIV translation. But I think that the Good News version is more punchy: “Gossip is spread by wicked people; they stir up trouble and break up friendships”. Yes! If you drop a little innocent-seeming remark about a person you’ve had as a friend for many years, and if they get to hear about it, they will never trust you quite the same again, will they? And why should they?

I spoke of gossip as a “poison”, and nowhere is that more true than in the life of a church. How many good, solid churches have been slowly destroyed by “trouble-makers” and “busybodies” who don’t know when to keep their mouths shut? Very likely they mean no ill – perhaps it just gives them a feeling of importance, that they’re “in the know”. Of course, there are times for open, frank discussion conducted in the love of Jesus, but “sin is not ended by multiplying words, and the prudent hold their tongues” (Proverbs 10:19). (Beware too that even prayer can be a vehicle of gossip. The person who prays fervently in a group that God “would bless Jack and Barbara as they go through this difficult time” may very likely start all sorts of hares running…)

Evangelist Billy Graham said, “A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip”. And there’s a Spanish proverb: “Remember that anyone who gossips to you will eventually gossip about you”. To listen to gossip is as wrong as to talk it.

I finish with a childhood memory which has stuck in my mind. A teacher told us that before saying anything about anybody else we should ask ourselves three questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it helpful? I’ve never forgotten that: I only wish I had obeyed it more carefully!

Father, please forgive the unwise, untrue and unkind words I have spoken, and please help me always be the prudent person who knows when to hold their tongue. Amen.