ME-ssentials – a GOSSIP – Day Twenty-Seven
ESSENTIALS for Me NOT to Be: a Gossip
September 27th, 2021
What’s your ESSENTIAL?
Essential: absolutely necessary; indispensable; the essence of a thing; inherent and intrinsic, vital
Just as there are so many ESSENTIALS for me to be, there are just as many ESSENTIALS for me NOT to be. Let’s explore those the other half of this month!
1 Timothy 1:5-8, ‘The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God. Those who fail to keep to this point, soon wander off into cul-de-sacs of gossip. They set themselves up as experts on religious issues but haven’t the remotest idea of what they’re holding forth with such imposing eloquence. It is true that moral guidance and counsel need to be given, but the way you say it and to whom you say it are as important as what you say.’ (MSG)
Psalms 35:19-20, ‘Don’t let these liars, my enemies, have a party at my expense; those who hate me for no reason, winking and rolling their eyes. No good is going to come from that crowd; they spend all their time cooking up gossip against those who mind their own business.’
Gossip wears faces. We love to be in the middle of it and hate to be the center of it. We blow right by all the little innuendos that are so easily said out of one side of our mouth—you know, ‘I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but I know you won’t say a thing to anyone so I’ll just tell you’ or ‘I shouldn’t repeat this but I know you deserve to know’ or ‘Did you hear…?’ or (I love this one) ‘I normally don’t talk about others this way but I just have to tell you this little tidbit!’—while we feign innocence and concern out of the other side of our mouth. What we are really saying is we can’t wait to divulge, often times, what was whispered to us that someone in secret who had heard from someone who heard from someone who absolutely had no intention of honoring what was once shared in private. We simply can’t wait, like the words are burning a hole in our mouths until we spit them out. We don’t care that those words cause damage, and honestly, can even wreck someone’s life, and even many lives. The excitement of being in the thick of ‘what’s going on’ is so enticing.
Until you’re the one that is being spoken of. Until it’s your secret and your privacy and your world that is about to be rocked, spray-painted with people’s sludge, t-p’ed by someone’s pooh on you. Then it isn’t so fun anymore, is it? not so exciting or enticing or intriguing to be the center of everyone’s—oftentimes—misinformed attention and ill-gotten agenda. Damage control for gossip about someone’s personal situation can take years for that person to recover from and repair what was busted when shared confidences are broken, if the tarnish can ever be unmarred and restored.
I have been the object of gossip. I also have been the gossiper. What I told myself—it of course was different because I was discussing things in order to help someone, or no one would ever know, or we had this person’s best interest at heart; it would never be leaked because everyone involved was trustworthy. But it did happen to get leaked, and I don’t know if these relationships will ever be able to be recovered and restored and whole again. We’ll certainly all never be the same. I talked about others behind their backs, and isn’t that just the crazy thing, to think that if I and someone else are talking about a mutual person behind his or her back, what’s to imagine that they’re not talking about me behind my back?! Ludicrous, huh, to suppose we’re not all just chatting it up about others secretly over shoulders and whispered conversations and psst-psst messages. Gossip is like a wildfire that burns everyone in its path and it’s essential to keep your thoughts and other’s secrets to yourself.
Ecclesiastes 7:21-22, ‘Don’t eavesdrop on the conversations of others. What if the gossip is about you and you’d rather not hear it? You’ve done that a few times, haven’t you—said things behind someone’s back you wouldn’t say to his face?’ (MSG)
