05.04.03 The 1st Driver of Negative Gossip
1. Being Abandoned by God
I actually used to wonder why an individual who claims to be ‘God-fearing’ could openly or even secretly involve himself or herself so fervently in gossiping against people. Then one day, I stumbled on an alarming truth. Apparently, the bible reveals that not only is negative gossip one of the many forms of wickedness, but such a habit could indicate that God gave up on or abandoned the gossiper. We learn that from Romans 1:28-29 which says (NLT): 28Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.
Let’s expound on that verse. What happens is that a person opts for a ‘godless’ life; a life that chooses to overlook God’s power and existence. Some go as far as looking down on God and propagating a perception that ‘believing in God’ is foolish. When a person stoops to that level, God simply ‘gives him or her up, which in incense attracts a horde of wicked habits one of which is “gossiping against people’ without any wince of guilt.
That must have been the plight that Shemaiah encountered in Nehemiah 6:10-13 when he behaved in a ‘godless’ manner by wanting to entice Nehemiah into the temple. The prophet had definitely lost all sensitivity towards God’s standards regarding hiding people there, as no one was supposed to enter the temple ‘just like that’. Being a prophet, Shemaiah must have known the procedures and restrictions, as they were very explicit from ages past. The fact that he asked Nehemiah to flee to the temple and lock the doors (1 Kings 6:31) suggests that the prophet was enticing the governor to hide in the inner sanctuary and not any of the open spaces of the temple. See how the Easy-to-Read Version of the bible reports the incident in Nehemiah 6:10. It reads (ERV): 10One day I went to the house of a man named Shemaiah son of Delaiah. Delaiah was the son of Mehetabel. Shemaiah had to stay in his house. He said, “Nehemiah, let’s meet in God’s Temple. Let’s go inside the Holy Place and lock the doors. Men are coming to kill you. Tonight they are coming to kill you.” It was no hidden secret that non-priests were forbidden to enter that part of the sanctuary (Numbers 18:6-7, Hebrews 9:6-7). So, from the look of things, Shemaiah seems to have either been completely out of touch with the procedures or ready to breach the temple’s divine order which by the way would have led to Nehemiah’s death (Numbers 18: 7). All in all, the prophet’s ‘schemes’ indicate that God had ‘given the man up’!
Shemaiah was not the only one that God seems to have deserted. We see the same predicament with Lulu at JuaLink. Apparently, the publicity officer got so overfamiliar with God to the extent that she could even gossip in prayer meetings without any fear that the heavens could react and work against her progress. By the time Lulu came to her senses and crawled back to her Maker, she had already lost her job and tainted her reputation. Just as the scripture depicts, God had ‘discarded’ her a long time ago.