Gossip.....The Sinful Grapevine

She walks into the work area and everyone quits talking immediately. I watch as her face blushes. She knows she is being talked about. No one understands the life that she has had to live. No one knows what has gone on behind closed doors as a child growing up. She has shared with no one the abuse that her husband dished out day after day of their married life. She is different. She doesn't socialize well with others. She gets on people's nerves with her constant trying to be liked and trying to help out. No one understands how unaccepted she has been all her life by those she has cared about the most. She just needs a friend. Gossip.......they were talking about her before she walked into the room. They were making fun of how she is always telling a story about something. They were rolling their eyes at her inability to complete a task in the way they felt it should be done. She is just a misfit. Now she stands there looking at them.....wondering what they were saying.......knowing what they were saying but pretending she didn't. How nice it would be if she had the courage to make them understand. Maybe they would even be her friend.

Christianity condemns all kinds of gossip. The Epistle to the Romans associates gossips ("backbiters") with a list of sins including sexual immorality and with murder. "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:28-32)

So there you have it. According to the Bible, gossip is as bad as sexual immorality and murder. Whew!! That's pretty heavy!! I have been guilty of gossip. How ashamed I am that I have hurt people by my comments. I have been asking God to allow the Holy Spirit to make me conscious every time Satan provides the opportunity to participate in gossip. I don't even want to sit there and listen. It's all about choice. I want to choose to understand her. I want to choose to look at her as Christ would look at her. I want to choose to be her friend.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt