05.02.06 The 4th Consequence of Participating in Negative Gossip

4. Becoming a Chronic Gossiper

Negative gossip can be addictive to the extent that it becomes a person’s ‘second nature’. Basically, repeated participation causes one to routinely gossip against others without struggle or any feeling of guilt or remorse. The person becomes so hard-set in the vice that changing is difficult, even if she or he wanted to.

Tobiah, Sanballat and Geshem must have been chronic gossipers, since the trio kept churning out loads of negative rumours just to stop Nehemiah from rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, as narrated in the ‘feature-stories’ section of this book.

Reading the JuaLink story, you notice that Lulu was a chronic gossiper; considering that even after being called to order by the new board, the publicity officer could not restrain herself from disseminating rumours alleging that Faraja had influenced the new board chairman, Niko, to kick Lulu out of JuaLink.