05.04.07 The 5th Driver of Negative Gossip

5. Jealousy

As we may know, jealousy pertains to feeling displeased, angered or resentful because someone has something you want or she or he has attained a level that you would desire. Jealousy can push people to negatively gossip against others. Out of hatred for ‘the good in the victim’, his or her achievements or the work that the victim has performed, a gossiper could resort to concocting and broadcasting toxic rumours just to destroy, pull down or ‘minimise’ the person she or he is jealous of.

Thinking back through the sufferings we faced during my personal encounter with a defamatory rumour; I can’t help but suspect that the negative gossip against us was not only caused by just the results of the revealing mystery visit or the prospective partner whose request we turned down. It is also highly probable that those who disseminated the rumour could have been jealous of the visible positive impact that we had brought to several organisations at the time.

Reading Sanballat’s and Tobiah’s narrative, the two men were very jealous that Nehemiah’s wall-rebuilding project had taken root. Nehemiah 4:7-12 discloses that when the duo plus the Arabs, Ammonites and Ashdodites heard that the project was finally taking shape; they sent rumours threatening to invade Jerusalem as well as create a confusion and kill the builders. Verses 11 to 12 of that scripture read (NKJV): ¹¹And our adversaries said, “They will neither know nor see anything, till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease.” ¹²So it was, when the Jews who dwelt near them came, that they told us ten times, “From whatever place you turn, they will be upon us.” Such was the jealousy-loaded negative gossip that circulated throughout the wall-rebuilding project.

In the JuaLink case, Lulu suffered from chronic jealousy. That weakness unveiled itself the minute stakeholders started applauding Faraja’s shining performance. It was jealousy that pushed Lulu to repeatedly report the manager’s mistakes to Eliya, hoping that by drawing Eliya’s attention to each and every mistake that Faraja made, she (Lulu) would taint the manager’s performance record before the director.