Gossip

Preachers assess their own sermons. We have almost unanimously agreed that we are rarely accurate at assessing the effectiveness of our own sermons. When we think we have “hit a home run” there are no comments. When we feel like we “struck out”—that is how you feel sometimes— we get more comments than usual.

Trust me when I say we don’t preach for the comments. We don’t craft a sermon for applause or “amens,” but after years of experience, you cannot help but notice that some sermons generate more comments than others, so we wonder why some sermons generate more comments than others, but we have learned that you cannot predict which sermons they might be. One more note, a sermon does not need any comment to have affected the heart of the listener.

What I find most satisfying are the sermons that generate further discussion or comments. After preaching a sermon on “gossip,” several people recalled sayings from famous people, or advice their mother gave them. This tells me that they were engaged.

For example, Bob Mellard said that the lesson reminded him of a line from Abraham Lincoln: “There’s so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.”

Some of you will remember Loraine Blankenship. Her daughter, one of our members, said Loraine used to tell her, “In the chain of gossip, be the missing link.” What I like about this little quip is that it actually provides sound advice in dealing with gossip. It contributed to my understanding of the subject. I wish I had heard that line prior to my sermon.

Corey, one of our elders, was reminded of a humorous quote by Benjamin Franklin: “Three can keep a secret when two are dead.”

My cousin, Ed Noggle chimed in on Facebook to say, “There have been times in my life when I wish others who were in the ‘know’ would have warned me about some individuals whose only interest was in doing harm to others for their own gain. Silence isn’t always golden.”

Ed is right. There is a time to speak up. The definition that has served me well for years is as follows: “Gossip is telling someone something they have no part in the problem or the solution.” In the case of my cousin, it would not have been gossip to have warned him about some false dealing, or whatever else the issue may have been.

The kind of thing addressed last Sunday was with reference to so much of the senseless unnecessary talk that hurts people’s attitudes toward other people. This kind of talk is taken so seriously by the writers of Scripture that it keeps company with “slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Ro. 1:30, 31). Paul writes, “…those who practice such things deserve to die…” (1;32). Those who practice gossip deserve to die.

Some translations use the word “whisperers” to describe the gossip. Whisperers separate chief friends (Prov 16:28). Solomon also writes, “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases” (26:20). The tempting nature of gossip is captured by the wise king when he compares it to “delicious morsels” (Prov 18:8; 26:22).

Jesus said that what comes out of the mouth is the abundance of the heart. Since gossip is something that comes out of the mouth, we can conclude that gossip is a heart issue. The cure for gossip is to purify the heart. The heart is purified by God’s word. Saturate your heart so that what comes of the heart is governed by the word. I should also add here that learning to love our neighbor must be considered a part of the remedy, because “love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Ro. 13:10).

It would serve all of us well to remember the Golden Rule: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).