Before the days of social media, before the days of cell
phones and text messages, people spoke to each other in person. This may come
as a shock, but the primary mode of communication used to be person-to-person,
face-to-face. In those days, the rumor mill ran through the aisles of the
supermarket, in the sitting room of the next-door neighbor's house, across
booths in the local diner. Gossip is an old thing. Centuries old, in fact,
according the textbooks I've been reading about medieval British culture. There
are entire books written about women as gossips in the Middle Ages, but it goes
back further than that.
Have you taken a look lately at what scripture says
about gossip? See James 3:8-10:
"And the tongue is a fire, a world of
unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole
body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by
hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature,
can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can
tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With
it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made
in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and
cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so."
Sadly, the impulse to gossip has not lessened, and because
of our flashy technologies today, gossip happens in more revolting ways than we
have seen before. In seconds, the world can find out a piece of information
that was supposed to be private or secret. You can tweet it. You can update
your Facebook status. You can send out a group text. Years ago, I remember
getting a text message from a girl I hadn't talked to in months. Completely out
of the blue, the text said: "Hey, did you hear that so-and-so came out of
the closet?" She could have sent that text message out to twenty other
people, and in a matter of minutes, "so-and-so" would've had dozens
of people discussing something deeply personal and difficult to reveal while
hiding behind their cell phones.
Worse still, there are private chat rooms. You can create an
alias and hide behind it on Twitter or Facebook. Using this, you can say
whatever you want about anyone, and it is very likely that it will never come
back to you. The modes of communication that we have access to today promote
one thing over all others: cowardice. We are too cowardly to have
self-control--we can get on a computer or cell phone, frantically type
something out in a moment of anger or sadness or fear, click "send"
or "post," and say things we wouldn't dream of saying in person to
someone, because there are rare repercussions for things we post on social
media. We are too cowardly to call people up and communicate our feelings in
person--Facebook pages like "Stephenville Confessions," for example,
allow us to rail on people and degrade people and disrespect them with our
words without anyone knowing. It allows the emotional release, but we can
expect no consequences in return. These modes of communication have given us
the opportunity to become more cowardly, uncontrolled, reckless versions of
ourselves, and require no apology or consideration for what might happen as a
result of what we've said.
Proverbs 18:21 says: “Death and life are in
the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”
What might we be killing when we recklessly send a text,
post a status, or tweet something? Hmm. A person's entire reputation? A
relationship? Someone's self-confidence? For me, personally, the more tweets
and statuses and posts I read that degrade people, my faith in humanity--and
Christians--dies a little bit more. Because that's the sad part. Christians do
this everyday. And, worse still, adult Christians do this everyday.
Every time you gossip about someone, regardless of the form in which you do it,
you take that person's reputation and dignity into your own hands and you taint
it. When you gossip, you are deeply affecting another person's actual life.
There is a time to speak and a time to be silent. As
Christians, we never, ever get to skip out on the effort and wisdom that is
required to know when it's time for which one. Self-control is hard, but it's
necessary, and more importantly, we're commanded to exercise it. God created
language, and God created our tongues. A tongue is apart of the body, and
Romans 12:1 begs us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing
to God, as our spiritual act of worship. Our tongues are not exempt from this
expectation.
"Think before you speak" is certainly considered a
cliche. That doesn't make it less true. Think before you speak. Think before
you text. Think before you tweet, post, blog, and call. Think, discern, and
then if you speak, speak out of truth and love.
Erin Daugherty, Abilene, Texas
