Day 14

“When words are many, sin is not absent but he who holds his tongue is wise.” — Proverbs 10:19

“You shall not bear false witness.” Because the tongue wields enormous power, Scripture has much to say about what comes out of our mouths. The truth is so often distorted. Mostly from insecurity, people lie, gossip and slander others to make themselves feel better and/or to focus blame elsewhere. The old sinful nature loves some juicy gossip, and sadly, slander and gossip can be prevalent within the Church of Jesus Christ too.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and is desperately wicked.”

Lies hurt and the Law of Moses is designed to protect people from the abuse of false testimony. In Deuteronomy 19:19, God said to Moses, “You must purge this evil from among you.” When we have been hurt by lies and gossip, our first instinct is that a good defence is a good offense, so we defend ourselves by incriminating others, and usually ‘spin’ the truth in the process. The problem is that if we repeat what we have said often enough, we learn to spin it well until we have convinced ourselves that it is actually true.

Jesus did not defend Himself against the Sanhedrin Council, and in His silence, demonstrated that we must watch carefully our own tendency to self-defend. Instead of pouring water on any deception or distortion made against us in hopes of dousing the flame, we often end up pouring gasoline instead, and we make it worse. Rather than letting it die, we feed the gossip into even greater deception and distortion. When it comes to verbal attacks against us, it is helpful to know that the real truth is probably worse than our accusers realize as we know our own hearts are inherently deceitful. However distorted slanderous gossip may be, we can always learn something useful about ourselves from our critics.

Oswald J. Smith adopted the posture in criticism: “No defence, no attack.” There are times when silence is golden. There will come a Day of Judgment. Jesus said, “I tell you that men will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted or by your words, you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36- 37). The best defence against slanderous accusations is to do what Jesus did... pray for our accusers.

Prayer: Dear Lord, though it can be disheartening to hear idle gossip, I take my comfort in you, knowing you are aware of the truth. Keep me from participating in such petty behaviour, and also to look beyond my accusers to you, lord, and to pray for them. Thank you, God.

To reflect upon: Have I been the victim of slanderous gossip, and, if so, how did I react? Knowing how Jesus reacted to His accusers, what would I do differently?