05.05.10 The 8th Practice for Avoiding Negative Gossip : Avoid the Company of Chronic Gossipers
Avoid the Company of Chronic Gossipers
In order to steer clear of negative-gossip conversations, you must stay away from chatterers since the vice is contagious and could drive you to take unreasonable decisions and actions that you may later regret.
On a personal note and as hinted earlier, I find that listening to negative gossip stifles my spirit; and that is the last thing that any God-fearing woman would want. So, as a principle, I shy away from people who habitually gossip against others. However, it does not mean that I throw friends away just like that. Actually, my relationship with the colleague I mentioned continues; but we stick to discussing constructive issues such as God’s Word, business and other things that create visible impact by transforming each other’s quality of life.
When you look at Nehemiah‘s narrative and just like in any other setting, there were chronic gossipers in Jerusalem itself, for example and as already mentioned, Shemaiah and his team of prophets, as well as Tobiah’s in-laws. But we do not see Nehemiah going anywhere near them however hit he was by the rumours from the Samarian Sanballat, Tobiah the Ammonite, the Arabian Geshem and others in the neighbouring regions. I would like to suggest that had Nehemiah entertained the company of Jewish gossipers, he would have been tempted to conjure up some rumours against his opponents, much to the delay and detriment of the project.
In the JuaLink story, you may remember how Neema avoided Lulu’s company and that of her gossip clique just by detaching herself, as already said in many places. Neema decided to deal with Lulu at a distance provided she got her work done. Despite Lulu’s attempts to appoint herself as Neema’s personal advisor, the young graduate must have feared ending up thinking and acting like Lulu given that ‘birds of the same feather flock together’.
When it comes to Aaron, and as already mentioned in several places, one of the major mistakes he made was to mix with chronic gossipers cum grumblers or rebellious crowds rather than maintaining his ‘professional distance’ as a leader. Surely, he should have been the first to avoid entertaining rumours from such people since he was aware that the mixed multitudes that left Egypt in Exodus 12:38 included some Egyptians, who could have pioneered the repetitive murmuring about returning to their home country rather than die in the wilderness. So, Aaron’s decision to mould an image of a god that they were used to, that is, ‘Apis’, the bull-like Egyptian god, could speak volumes about how close he could have engaged with the gossipers, to the point of knowing what would calm the Egypt-minded crowd down. But to the contrary, his effort to please the crowd was so shallow that it eventually led to loss of a precious and irreplaceable metal, followed by loss of lives and a camp-wide plague.
Therefore, putting a boundary can stop you from metamorphosing into a negative gossiper; which, by the way, could easily happen should you be fed with bad rumours round the clock given that ‘we become what we hear’. In fact, you are the average of the five people you spend your time with. See what 1 Corinthians 15:33 says (AMPC): 33Do not be so deceived and misled! Evil companionships (communion, associations) corrupt and deprave good manners and morals and character. Long story short, gossipers are to be avoided. Do not hang out with them. Since prevention is better than cure, choose your friends wisely to avoid getting infected with the habit or becoming addicted to it.