Truth seems to be getting harder to come by in our world. Our social media feeds are full of fake news of all kinds. The political posts are easy to locate, of course. A few months ago, several of my Facebook friends posted a story about a politician’s tax proposal, expressing significant outrage. I felt compelled to debunk the story because it ignored how income tax rates actually work in the US. If we want to be outraged about a political candidate, we should all make sure that we’re being outraged about something that is real, not something that is simply inaccurate. Similarly, there have been plenty of posts about Covid-19 that can be proved false by doing the math.

Even setting aside politics, however, I find no lack of sensational stories that show up on my feed that have already been debunked by various fact-checking sites. They’ll disappear and then show up again a year or two later.

Why is that?

As we look at these stories, one thing that is true of all of them is that they are unusual or surprising. Most of them also invoke some other negative emotions: outrage, horror, disgust. It turns out that social media hasn’t caused some sudden change in humanity that makes us tell and listen to these stories. Rather, this is the same set of motivations that have set people whispering to one another about the actions of their friends and neighbors for the long history of our fallen world. In a word, it’s gossip.

Gossip is one of those sins that good, church-going Christians tend not to want to talk about much. After all, most of us have indulged in it on occasion. Sometimes we even use making prayer requests as an excuse for gossip: “Y’all, we need to pray for the Campbells. Their oldest daughter, Maisie, has been hanging around with the wrong crowd, and my youngest has heard that she’s been pale and having some trouble keeping her breakfast down, if you know what I mean.” Not all gossip-laden prayer requests are quite so blatant, but I would guess that most of us have at least heard a prayer request that was more gossip than legitimate request without trying to stop it. I would also speculate that some of us have shared a prayer request with details that weren’t ours to share, including details that were rumor more than fact.

Because most of us have indulged in gossip and we see it as harmless, idle talk, we tend to view gossip as a “lesser sin,” not something that we need to worry quite so much about confessing and avoiding. After all, Maisie Campbell’s sins are far greater and we’re much more concerned that she confess and repent. But what is God’s view of gossip?

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32 ESV)

We see gossip here in the middle of quite a list. Most things in these verses we quickly reject. We’re not evil, or God-haters, or malicious. We’re not going to murder anyone. However, Paul doesn’t distinguish among these different forms of sin. All of these things are “what ought not to be done.” All “who practice such things deserve to die.”  They’re all sin.

Of course, as Christ-followers, we know that deserving to die because of what we have done is not the final word. Christ has died for our sins. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” (1 John 1:9 ESV). That is our amazing good news. However, when it comes to the “little” sins like gossip, we need to make sure we keep on reading. “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:10 ESV).

Gossip is only one of the “little” sins we indulge in, thinking they are not a big deal, but God has made it clear that all of our sins are a big deal. We must ask God to show us the sins still in our lives today. Then we should confess those sins and turn away from them. To avoid gossip, we must make certain that everything we say, whether in person or on social media, is not only true but also worth sharing.

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash