Question Everything

Imagine these scenes, all of which have happened to me in the last week:

1. I walk into a store and a person quickly seeks me out to pray for her friend, and then goes on to quickly insert that her friend is deep in sin because of ‘blah blah blah’.

2. A lady friend calls me to ask me to pray for her sister, ‘who is emotionally disturbed’ because she doesn’t agree with the sister on a petty issue.

3. A woman at my daughter’s school let’s it slip that she knows our family is on financial assistance at school.

4. A small group of dedicated naysayers are attempting to undermine a ministry within our church, well, two ministries actually, but are doing so as a misguided attempt to bring the ministries to health. Were these men and women to pray and read the Word, they’d see that the ministries are indeed healthy, but their gossip is starting to take it’s toll.

I’ve been very discouraged in this past week to see the level of gossip in my midst. I go out of my way to avoid it, to the point of telling people that they need to be quiet when I am handed gossip, so if I am hearing it how much more so are people, who don’t fear it, falling victim to it’s subversive damage?

Gossip, whether in the guise of ‘praying for a friend’ or ‘constructive criticism to all but the party involved’ is a sin.

From Psalm 50:19-20: “You give your mouth to evil. Your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother’s son.”

From Proverbs 11:
9 The loose tongue of the godless spreads destruction; the common sense of the godly preserves them.

13 A gadabout gossip can’t be trusted with a secret, but someone of integrity won’t violate a confidence.

We are supposed to be a family, but increasingly it seems believers are less and less concerned with the hearts of those around them. Oh, we know our rules, and we are careful not to work on Sunday (though the original Sabbath was Saturday) and we are double-sure not to curse out loud (egads), but we tear down our friends, our family, to make ourselves look good, and then we delude ourselves into thinking we are ‘better than those darn homosexuals and heathens who are going straight to hell!’.

The whole mess makes me weak with spiritual exhaustion. Any sin separates us from God (Isiaih 59:1-2). Gossip, adultery, homosexuality, provoking your children to anger, losing your temper, murder, rape, stealing, lying, abortion, not honoring your father and mother… All of these are sin. All of these are EQUAL in God’s eyes. In our own world, we tend to weigh them according to their damage level, but God sees them through eyes we can’t even fathom.

But when we go to the Bible, we find that God has a different attitude about sin. There are many passages like Isaiah 59 that teach that sin–any sin–separates us from the Lord. From a salvation perspective, no where does the Bible teach that some sins are worse than others. In fact, we find some interesting groupings of sins when we study this topic. For example, Paul wrote in Galations 5:19-21,

“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleaness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Paul says that just like a murderer won’t get into heaven, neither will someone who tells lies. Neither the adulterer nor the person who can’t control his temper (see “outbursts of wrath” in verse 20) will see Heaven. Revelation 21:8 has a similar list of sins that we might not equate on a mortal level of consequense, but that God does equate.

Please, consider what you may be doing with your mouth that’s harming the body of Christ. One day we will all stand and give an account. Please take my words to heart… Gossip is as destructive as murder, rape or any of the other horrid sins listed above.

1 John 3:15-16
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.