Teachings of Scripture range over the personal conduct standards of persons. Gossip is forbidden. Various words are adopted to identify gossip, including whisper, slander, and other combinations of words referring to the practice that, intentionally or unintentionally, reduces the reputation, respect and personal rights of any persons or groups. This includes diminishing persons in some way to others, and likely spins – facts presented in some personal way, perhaps convoluted even if referred facts hold up. Persons may not know they are gossiping, but they likely have some negative feeling about what they are doing. Gossip, even if true information, shows disrespect for God’s highest earthly creation. It assumes too much in the mind of the gossiper about facts, motives, meaning and consequences. It cannot be wholly withdrawn in later attempts to repair damage. Our presentation of persons to others is not for putting them down.
Appetite for gossip is pervasive because great numbers of persons devour rag (gossip) newspapers, television and internet. Gossip sells. Racy and scurvy stories about celebrities and neighbors are widely believed. The practice becomes most reprehensible when it invades sacred precincts, so that spiritual truth is warped or lost in the distorted statements of persons who likely are taken by carnal, perhaps prurient, interests. The book, The Da Vinci Code, rose to the heights of the sales charts on several occasions. In polls it was discovered that a large percentage of readers believed what they read in the Code. There is no evidence for the book. It is a modern gossip piece of an ancient personage. From the book we learn that Jesus married, fathered children, and his descendants are alive in our era. His life was lived as a special mortal. The book, advertised as a novel, was turned into gossip. Jesus is the only one in the western world whose life could be so distorted, and attract so many readers. It is imaginative slander that twists historical records. This writer disrespected the meaning of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Perceptive authors would not likely want their legacies to be that they made up an untrue story about Jesus. The worst of it is that it presents to the public a largely secular view of Jesus when the true point of his history is that we follow the Lord of heaven. The distortion is found even more objectionable when a critic made it one of the ten books from history that one must read.
Not only is gossip spoken against in the Bible, it is illustrated as a negative force in the movements that occupy the long narrative. Persons seeking power often use gossip. Absalom designed a pattern of gossip that infected the population, causing David to flee Jerusalem for a short period. The restoration leaders, whose stories are found in Ezra and Nehemiah, armed the people to protect themselves and their project from the gossip mill. The New Testament recounts stories of gossip generated by leaders who would thwart the advancement of the gospel. Such gossip cliques are active in our time. They cause rise and fall in the stock markets; they cause wars and rumors of wars; and, they cause family break up – and so the story extends. Their imaginings are a staple of a carnal society, extended by adults and distorting values for the youth of the world. They are, we are told, favorite conversational fodder around the water coolers in workplaces. An honorable legacy anyone might build is that he or she did not speak or write furtively of persons or groups of persons, so retained proper respect and grace. One of the beauties of scholarship is the insistence on verification by evidence to conclusions – so to give integrity to the communicator and to the discovery of truth, beauty, justice. And, it provides some protection from the pain and damage of prejudice, falsehood, distortion, and poor context for life. Dignity belongs. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020