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The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels, and they go down into the innermost parts of the body. – Proverbs 26:22
Words have an ability to cut deeper than any knife; through our flesh and bones, down to the core of who we are. They cut through to our soul, gossip makes its way to our heart in damaging and sometimes irreversible ways. When someone spreads rumors or gossip about you, it can feel like poison in your veins, arrows in your back.
Cut open a feather pillow on a windy day. Let the feathers blow and spread with the wind. Now try and pick up all those feathers and put them into the bag and make the pillow exactly the way it used to be. It’s impossible. The same thing is true with rumors. Once they spread, you can never repair their damage, you can never make it right, or the way It used to be, ever again. The damage is done. Like flames, gossip can start off as a small comfort for one or two, but quickly grows out of control, spreading past it’s boundaries, and becomes an all consuming fire, destroying everything in it’s path.
Proverbs 26:20 tells us that fire can only exist if it has something to feed on, something to burn. In the same manner, rumors and gossip can only exist when there are people who will give it fuel to burn. “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, contention quiets down.” Verse 21 says, “Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife.”
Sometimes it’s easy to read these verses and acknowledge the fact that we have been the targets of gossip. That we have been hurt by it, that we know its sting all to well. But do we ever read these verses and apply them to our own lives. Do we let the word of God penetrate our hearts and point out areas where we need correction, or when we have been wrong. Are we often found on the receiving end of the knife, or the giving end? Are we more often being cut, or holding the handle?
In Ephesians 4:3 it says “Try your best to let God’s Spirit keep your hearts united. Do this by living at peace.” We are called to be the reflection of Christ to this world, we are His representatives, we are His ambassadors, sharing His goodness, mercy, and grace to all we meet. When we give into gossip and rumors the message of Christ is obscured, and so is our ability to show Christ to those around us.
Nothing can kill the unity in the church, a community, family, or friendships, faster than gossip and rumors. If we are to be the church, and the church is supposed to be God’s hands and feet, if we are to show the love of God to this culture and this world, then we need to be unified, and focus on the things that build each other up, and build up the body of Christ as well, not tear it down.
I hope you always remember the damage that can be done with a whisper. I pray you never have to feel that sting, and pray we will less often be the one to deliver that painful blow. Jesus tells us to love God with all when have, and then to love our neighbors as ourselves. But to often, that juicy, too good to keep to ourselves, gossip overrides our ability to remember those words. The next time you’re tempted to share something, or tell someone something about someone else, or hear someone else saying things, I hope you don’t add fuel to that fire. I hope you bring cooling water to help extinguish those destructive flames.
If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless – James 1:26
love, live, burn
- k
