Read
6Foolish talk will get you
into a lot of trouble.
7Saying foolish things
is like setting a trap
to destroy yourself.
8There's nothing so delicious
as the taste of gossip!
It melts in your mouth.
20Where there is no fuel
a fire goes out;
where there is no gossip
arguments come to an end.
21Troublemakers start trouble,
just as sparks and fuel
start a fire.
22There is nothing so delicious
as the taste of gossip!
It melts in your mouth.
Reflect
Every sensible person agrees that gossip is a bad thing. You don’t even have to be especially wise to come to that conclusion! It’s rarely completely truthful, almost always skewed and sometimes utterly false. Gossip always delights in whatever is salacious, demeaning, vulgar. Good news about someone is never called gossip – the news of a person’s success or promotion might be a rumor, if we are not certain of it, but gossip embellishes nasty little tales of failure or degradation or corrupt behavior, making the most of the worst.
Lives have been destroyed by gossip, but never by the truth. (A person may have truly done something wrong, or had a wrong done to him or her, which may be destructive, but it’s the action itself that destroys, not the truth.)
So, gossip is bad. Shouldn’t do it. Might hurt someone, and might get hurt ourselves if the story comes back on us.
Why then do we do it anyway? Because, let’s face it, we do. Or at the very least, we listen to gossip, which amounts to the same thing.
Because, as these Proverbs tell us twice over, “There’s nothing so delicious as the taste of gossip! It melts in your mouth…”
It’s like a diet of ice cream and french fries: so very tasty, but deadly in the end.
Maybe we like the idea of having the inside track – knowing something before others do. We take pleasure in being shocked by the dirty bits. There’s a kind of pathetic thrill in thinking that somebody else is even more messed up than I am.
We tell ourselves it’s harmless, a little gossip – but we’re setting a trap for ourselves. Regard for the truth goes by the board, and our self-righteousness climbs like a bad cholesterol count.
Respond
God of truth and grace, save us from the temptation of stories that delight in the faults of others. Instead, fill our hearts with compassion, and a deep sense of our own need of redemption. In the name of Jesus, who is himself full of truth, and full of grace.
Greg Paul
Greg Paul is a pastor and member, as well as the founder, of the Sanctuary community in Toronto. Sanctuary, a community in which people who are wealthy and people who are poor live, work and share their experiences and resources on a daily basis, makes a priority of welcoming and caring for some of the most hurting and excluded people in Canada’s largest city, including people struggling with addiction, mental illness, prostitution, and homelessness. Greg is the author of the recently released Resurrecting Religion and several other award-winning books: Simply Open; Close Enough to Hear God Breathe; The Twenty-Piece Shuffle; and God In The Alley. He is the father of four children, and married to Maggie, who has three children of her own.