Gossip

The ethics of the Christian should be equal to the ethics of the journalist And yet it is so often true that the so-called Christian will repeat the story, the rumour, the piece of gossip, which he knows perhaps only by hearsay, and of the truth of which he is by no means certain.

The journalist has to resist the temptation to write the spicy and malicious story. Too ,often the Christian falls to that temptation, for there are no hotbeds of gossip like Churches and congregations .

There are two things we should never repeat.

We should never repeat the story about the truth of which we are uncertain.

During war-time there was actual legislation to punish, and to punish severely, the person who disseminated alarmist and defeatist rumours.

The proverb has it that three things can never come back - the spent arrow, the spoken word, and the lost opportunity.  There is nothing so attractive as gossip, and there is nothing so dangerous as gossip.

We might well remind ourselves more often than we do that we shall one day give account for every idle word that we have spoken (Matt.12:36).

We should never repeat what we have been told in confidence, or what we have been privileged to see or to experience in some private moment of intimacy.

One of the great institutions of the Roman Catholic Church is the confessional. It may have its abuses, but it is infinitely valuable to have some place in which a person can lay bare his soul in utter ,confidence that what he says will never be repeated.

To betray a confidence is one of the lowest actions to which any man or woman can stoop-and , yet it is repeatedly done.

As James was so well aware, there are few things in this world which can do so much damage as the tongue (Jas. 3:1-12).

Let us remember the strict ethic of the journalist regarding the repetition of any story, and let us as Christians be no less honourable in our speech.

- William Barclay