Is gossiping and talking falsely a sin, like murder?
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I think sometimes people in churches and beyond believe that there are levels of sins — like murder is not okay. Neither is adultery (cheating on your wife or husband is not okay), or stealing, or using God’s name or Jesus’s name as a swearword. There is a lot of ‘tut-tutting’ if people say God’s name as a swear word; or sexual sins, let’s not get into that.
Do we pick and choose which sins we think are okay or the ones that suit us?
Recently I was speaking to someone whose reputation was tarnished by gossip. They were hurt by words on social media, and actual false words said about them — they said, by Christians.
I felt sorry for the person, and sadder that the people gossiping were Christians. I know that no-one is perfect and everyone has said things about others. But we are not supposed to do it, by Jesus’s standards.
When I was young, I used to car share.
I worked at a place away from home and I shared with another girl.
This girl would gossip about people all the way to work and all the way home.
I started to feel uncomfortable after a while to the stage that I felt flat all the time.
In the end I just had to drive my own car and hang the petrol bill (my car was a little Mini-Minor, so wasn’t that expensive to run).
So, what does Jesus say about gossip and sin?
He says in Matthew 12:34-35 that “the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” and a good person brings out good things stored up in them and an evil person the evil things that are stored in them.
Then further down he says in Matthew 12:36-37 that we will have to give account of the words we have said. Bit scary, hey?
Liz Spicer.
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Contributed
Gossip and slander destroy, a loose tongue sows seeds of division, it says in the Bible. God says he hates it, in Proverbs 6: 16-19.
Often in my work I come across students that are caught up in gossiping, especially on social media, and I use this to explain to them they don’t have to join in or retaliate.
In Proverbs 26:20 it says “for lack of wood the fire goes out (if we don’t add wood or join in gossip) and where there is no whisper, quarrelling ceases”.
So, God does consider gossip as serious as other sins, so if we don’t want to be accountable for gossip, we need to keep our wood off the fire and be careful with our words.
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