A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends.
Last week I read a short book on a subject I’d never read a book about before: gossip. Paul Williams’ Just Between You and Me turned out to be compelling and personally convicting.
He calls gossip a ‘respectable sin’ in that we don’t seem to be bothered about it in the way we are about other sins. Yet sin it is: in Romans 1:29-31, Paul lists it alongside envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, slander, God-hating and more. Is that where we’d have expected to find what we might regard as perfectly innocent – just a little tasty morsel about someone?
He defines gossip as sharing personal information about people to their harm, when it’s none of our business. We may do so to cause them harm, or just to make ourselves look good, because we’re in the know (I may say that this is of course different from a legitimate safeguarding disclosure, or raising a confidential concern with a pastoral leader).
I might add that often gossip is groundless, speculative, or distorted in transmission, in which case there is the additional danger of breaking the ninth commandment.
Most of the book is a careful look at what Proverbs says about gossip. It is very tasty: The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts (18:8). Indeed! We always seem to remember tittle-tattle.
It can be extremely destructive, separating friends, as the verse above tells us – and stirring up conflict.
Williams considers the attractions of gossip to us. Maybe we think it will win us friends or give us access to a friendship group. Maybe we want power and control. Perhaps we want to bring someone down, or take revenge. Maybe we are jealous.
All this needs to be repented of, and the antidote is the fear of the Lord – that great theme which runs right through Proverbs. He’s watching! We must live the redeemed life He calls us to.
I found this book searching. It’s a quick read – but important. How easy it is in a church community to pass on gossip with the pious prefix “Just for your prayers”!!
Instead, let’s be a community in which we heed the Apostle Paul’s instruction about our regular conversation: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (Ephesians 4:29)
