05.05.14 The 12th Practice for Avoiding Negative Gossip : Be Empathetic

Be Empathetic

As already discussed in several places, being empathetic deals with sensing another person’s emotions or feelings if you were in his or her place. Empathy could deter you from gossiping, by simply asking how you would feel if you were the victim.

At JuaLink for instance, Lulu could have empathised with Faraja, had the publicity officer not been too obsessed with becoming the publicity manager. Being a mother, the officer should have sensed how Faraja would feel when mocked for being childless. This and other examples could have deterred Lulu from taking Faraja through a living hell as a result of the publicity officer’s negative rumours.

In Nehemiah’s story, Shemaiah and other prophets, being fellow Jews, should have put their feet in Nehemiah’s shoes and understood how hard he was working to make sure that the wall got rebuilt; and how demotivating a false prophecy would be to him and his team.

Therefore, put yourself in the shoes of the targetted person. If you would not want something said about you, do not say it about the victim. Determine to love others as you love yourself ‘by not doing to others what you would not want them to do to you’ (Matthew 7:12).