Gossip…

“…speak and act as people who will be judged by the law of freedom.  For the judgement is merciless to one who has not shown mercy…Who then are you to judge your neighbor?…” (James 2:12-13, 4:12b)

Gossip is always negative and disdainful of another person.  If we praise another person we don’t label that gossip; we’re giving a compliment.  Gossip arises out of the prideful, selfish desire to look good.  It highlights another person’s frailty or oddity solely to elevate the gossiper.  

Gossip is an artifact not only of pride though.  It is also a powerful tool of the enemy of our souls to divide us one from another, to think of our brothers and sisters as “other” than ourselves, in a different category of humanity.

Gossip freezes time in the minds of both the one who passes on the gossip as well as the one who hears the gossip.  It traps the one being gossiped about in their wrongdoing, their shame story, their weakness.  It often fails to differentiate between their actions and character.  Labels stick in the mind.  We often make excuses for ourselves in order to minimize our own failures, but do we do the same for other people?

Gossip is a serious sin despite how common it is and how often it is viewed  as mere entertainment in the media.  Many have made a reputation for themselves by mocking entertainers and political figures, exposing their shortcomings and reducing them to fodder for their jokes.  And people laugh along, compounding the wrongdoing but feeling protected because they’re not the ones creating the material in the first place. 

“Detraction” is exposing another person’s failure or weakness to someone who really is not entitled to the information. It is a violation of justice, for it harms the God-given dignity of another human being who has been created by God and stamped with his image.  Christians need to be especially on guard against this subtle sin when asking others to pray for someone.  It’s easy to say too much, to say what doesn’t need to be said.

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.  For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.  Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-3).

Jesus here tells us that our happiness in this life depends upon our imitating him in being merciful and compassionate, in recognizing the need for us to focus on fixing our own failures instead of someone else’s.  He has shown us great mercy, infinite compassion and generous pardon.  How dare we withhold mercy from another for whom Jesus suffered and died?

When we seek out the good news in others rather than the bad news, we begin to see the world differently.  We begin to find good people in all sorts of unusual places.  When we practice generosity and kindness (after all, we are of the same “kind”) and that practice begins to become habitual for us, we radiate the peace and joy of Jesus out to a world which so needs him, a world which thirsts desperately for the water of Life.