Roughly sixty years ago, my parish priest taught
the confirmation class I was in that “Gossip is in the same category as
murder.” The words have stuck with me all this time. At first, I was intrigued
but puzzled. I couldn’t quite figure out what he meant. I thought it a sort of
alarmist exaggeration, the way tapping someone with a pencil is different in
degree but not in kind from smacking someone full force in the head with a
baseball bat.
Then as years passed, I saw the searing damage
that gossip can do to others and had done to myself. I was, and remain, utterly
amazed at how easy it is for large numbers of people who have known someone for
many years to believe gossip about that
person, even when the gossip is markedly in contradiction to their own personal
knowledge of the gossip’s target. Even a secular court, as a minimum, at least
goes through the motions of allowing an accused person to make a defense, but
gossip-mongers and gossip-believers show no awareness of how illogical and
unjust gossip is, and even take offense when it is suggested that they might be
treating someone unfairly. I’ve seen this many times, in matters great and
small.
And then an eye-opening, bone-chilling realization
came to me. I read the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Acts, which recounts
Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem. First, we see how the leaders in Jerusalem welcomed
Paul and rejoiced when he recounted God’s successes among the Gentiles through
his ministry. Then they told Paul about the “thousands of believers among the
Jews” who are “zealous for the law,” and who have been lied to by unidentified
people regarding Paul’s teaching about the law: “They have been told about you”
is how that section of the lesson begins. This is gossip. The source of such
so-called information is usually introduced as, “I heard…” or “Someone said…”
Let’s pull back the vagueness from what it really going on. Gossipers often say
they want to “maintain confidentiality”, but that is a foul masked deception
for protecting liars.
For gossip to be effective, it must be originated
by back-stabbing cowards; then it must be believed by those who hear it and
then pass it on. At the time of Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, “thousands” have
believed gossip that is, like all gossip, a lie. It was Jewish Christian
believers who started the lie, other believers received it, and other believers
passed it on. That gossip eventually brought about the violent assault on Paul
even in the holy precincts of the Temple, his arrest, his two-year confinement
in Judea, his being sent to Rome in chains, and eventually the martyrdom of
that generation’s best apostle. It was malicious gossip (that phrase is
redundant; gossip is always malicious) that started the ball rolling. My parish
priest was right; gossip is indeed in the same category as murder. It is false
witness that destroys the innocent. I get it now.
How very easy it is for believers of that time, of
every time, of our own time to receive and pass on gossip that is titillating,
builds illusive smug self-righteousness, creates a bogus sub-community of
“those who know,” and smears another person who is, of course, absent and
undefended at the time of the tale-telling. Gossip deserves zero tolerance. It
is damnable. Satan is “the father of lies” (John 8:44), but Jesus is “the
truth” (John 14:6). Can it be any clearer than that?
Still, as always, evil cannot ever have the last
word. Evil is a parasite; it has no life of its own, and to live it must suck the
life of another whose life is God-given and preserved. The manifold wickedness that led to Jesus’
betrayal and eventual death was “in fulfillment of the Scriptures”. It all
worked together for good, for the salvation of the world. Those who are the
victims of gossip are being treated the way Jesus was, abandoned and denied by
friends, and therefore are put into his way by means that nothing else can
serve. It is an answer to the prayer, “God, make me like Jesus.”
St. Francis de Sales teaches, with heady wisdom,
that the sufferings the faithful endure can be “aromatized with the divine
sweetness, benignity, and clemency, and their bitterness most delicious.” Such
sufferings must of course include being the target of gossipers. They can cause
wounds that can never heal, hurts that can never go away. In the case of Paul,
they can even lead to death. May God bring to repentance those who create
gossip, believe gossip, and pass gossip on to others. May God keep all of us
from falling prey to gossip as either originators, acceptors, or targets.