Government offices have special weakness for it; married men and women take pleasure in it; it is something we all do; some of us are experts at it, namely, gossiping.
Gossip is a casual or idle chat with a friend, a neighbour or a relative. A gossiper is a person who has privileged information about people and proceeds to whisper earful of inaccurate information to others. Their tongue is like a dart. According to the Bible, rumormongers are “idlers, gadding about from house to house saying what they should not.” (1 Timothy. 5: 13).
Gossip builds unity, with shared interests and knowledge. Scandalmongers are capable of finding a desired mate or ending a lover’s knot by falsehood; babble-mouths has the power of passive attack like — isolating and harming others’ feeling and reputations. Gossipers even plan evil e.g. Many religious leaders of Jesus’ time were so jealous of his popularity that they even schemed ways to put him to death by bringing false accusations against him. It finally, led to His crucifixion.
There are two types of gossips: bad and good. Bad gossip is passing true or false tale that causes pain to the victim by distorting facts purposely and maliciously. Such gossip can bounce back and hurt the one who started it, e.g. In the Bible Joseph’s own brothers stung by the scorpion of jealousy banished him and sold him into slavery, yet God raised Joseph to great power that his own brothers had to come to him for help later. (Genesis: 37).
The intention of a bad gossipers is to sing their own praises and make others look bad. This they do by humiliating, slandering or tarnishing the other person’s reputation. This “spreading of dirt” with harmful gossip is impossible to clean and heal the wounds done to someone.
Bad gossip burst out from ‘jealousy, doubt, selfishness, and many more such traits.’ Greedy people spend more time trying to destroy others rather than make some progress themselves. Therefore, they are generally unhappy people, never happy in any situations — not satisfied with what God has given them.
Good gossip is that which encourages those who hear the tittle-tattle. It is never a polluted chat. Good gossip can erase depression. It elicits ripples of laughter. Its words are not like bombs that wound victim mind and make targeted heart cry. We find people, who are sad, suddenly feel happy, almost on cloud nine, when they gossip. So, laughter is not the only best medicine to drive away unhappiness, gossip also is a good healer as it brightens up a sad heart. Therefore, continue with the magic moment of gossiping — harmless gossip; and say good bye to gloominess.
But if we want God’s blessings on us we should not wound the feelings and damage the reputation of others by indulging in character assassination and take innocent blood on our hands with bad gossip.
