Jay’s Weekly Word

“The Tragedy of Gossip”

We live in a gossip culture. Reality television purports to take us deep inside the lives of people we don’t know and learn their most intimate secrets and thoughts. We’re glued to the television while contestants on The Biggest Loser or Project Runway trash the other contestants behind their backs and then later say, “well, it’s just a game.” Somewhere along the way, we bought into the lie that it was okay to express our negative opinions of other people in destructive ways – that it was somehow our “right” to speak freely without restraint and certainly without constraint. This week, I’d like to debunk that line of reasoning.

Let’s start with the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition. Gossip is defined as 1. Rumor or talk of a personal, sensational, or intimate nature. 2. One who spreads intimate or private rumors or facts.

The reason gossip is so destructive is because it erodes trust between friends and people with whom you work alongside. Working with others requires mutual respect that each of you has a positive contribution to make to the business or project. Gossip influences others to think that a person cannot make a worthwhile contribution. It disparages the character and ability of a person and makes it more difficult for them to receive a fair hearing for their ideas and input. It creates a negative impression of a person that is usually exaggerated or simply outright false and once the impression is made the victim of gossip has to expend greater energy overturning the impression. The cycle of gossip is then exhausting and counter-productive to any project or family of relationships. Trust is essential to being able to function together as a community.

Gossip not only hurts the person being gossiped about, it hurts the one doing the gossiping. Have you met someone known for passing along useless negative information about others? Who enjoys being around a person like that? The person who gossips compromises their own integrity becoming known quickly as someone who can’t be trusted. Their witness for Christ is lost as the gossiper becmes recognized as a hypocrite and as someone who speaks out of both sides of their mouth. You can’t trust something that a gossiper says because you know they’re only telling you something to make themselves look good. Their interest isn’t in truth or compassion – it’s only in filling their own empty soul. Over time the gossiper loses all credibility.

Have you noticed that the most balanced and spiritually mature people you know never really share their negative perceptions of others? They don’t have to. Mostly these people are focused on how to make a situation better rather than being stuck in analyzing from a thousand different points of view why its so bad. Spiritually mature people want to build-up not tear down and they are able to see others for the positive contributions they can make. When spiritually mature people hear gossip they shut it down, preferring to believe the best about others.

Gossiping runs so counter to the spirit of Christ, Paul lists it with other behaviors that are destructive to one’s personal life as well as the community life of the church. Paul writes, “Ro 1:28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

That’s pretty harsh. People who gossip are deserving of death Paul says. If you breakdown the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition this would read “people who spread intimate or private rumors or facts are deserving of death.” It’s noteworthy that the behaviors that destroy the community of God’s faith are worthy of the worst punishment God can mete out.

According to this passage gossiping evolves out of a mind that Paul calls out as “depraved.” A depraved mind (again using AHD4thed) is one that is “morally corrupt, perverted.” In other words to be depraved is to be absent the goodness that God created to exist in you. What’s more, Paul says that there were those in his own time that exercised this depravity (through gossip) after having a knowledge of the truth! Some things never change.

We’ve been called as Christians to rise above the destructive behaviors of the world because we have been TRANSFORMED to see life in an entirely different way. Gossip is NOT okay behavior just because everyone around us is doing it. It is toxic to the community as well as to our own souls. For Christians, our self-esteem doesn’t come by how we measure up to others (hence our need to put others down) but from the fact that even while we were deep in our lost-ness – God extended to us amazing grace. In the kingdom of God’s grace there are no winners or losers only those whom God has saved by His grace and those who need to hear and experience God’s message of love. If that message is best expressed by how we live our lives, let’s encourage each other to live the gospel of attraction – living for the building up of people within our community.

The Bible tell us specifically how to deal with someone by whom we feel we’ve been wronged. It’s a way that requires a measure of maturity and can be terribly awkward – BUT it’s a way that if practiced will lead to incredible growth as a Christian. “Mt 18:15 “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”


Finally, gossip keeps the church from focusing on the larger issues of radical servanthood and spreading the good news. Gossip rather keeps the church inwardly focused on relationship-dynamics and the taking up of sides and the uncovering of who said what and how they said it! Can you imagine a bigger waste of the church’s time and resources? God’s plan for us is to experience instead the fruits of his Spirit that lives inside of us. And like the good gardner these fruits must be cultivated.

Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

What was true in Paul’s time is still true today. Let us keep in step with the Spirit and crucify together the sinful nature that threatens to destroy the grace-filled life God created us to enjoy.