I Don't Repeat Gossip (So Listen Close the First Time)

Greetings, y'all! 👋😄 

I hope the week has treated you well. 😊 I had a bit of a struggle mid-week and had to take a little unplanned time off, but things seem to be back on track, and I'm feeling pretty good. 😊👍

I was scrolling through my Instagram (all ten posts) the other day and came across (😆*snort*) this post I made about a year ago:

I posted it as a sort of (?) snarky response to an offline incident that really rubbed me the wrong way, to put it mildly. The details aren't important, but I got to thinking about gossip and judgment, and how even the kindest, most well-intentioned people can inadvertently hurt others by having what they think is just a regular ol' conversation.

There are folks out there who will take the "juicy" bits from these mostly innocuous chats and tuck them away until they get the chance to toss them out like precious stones to a new audience. 

Those people enjoy hearing about others' misfortunes, and they enjoy the attention they get when they drop these little bombshells. They get off on the shocked gasps, the clutched pearls, and the "Nooooo! Really???"s. It gives them a smug sense of superiority.

It's bad enough that this type of person exists among the general population, but it's even worse when this type of person goes to church and claims to be a Christian. 

We're all familiar with "The Church Lady", Dana Carvey's holier-than-thou, morally upright, church-going woman of God:

I think most churches have their own "Church Lady" (mine does not... any more). She's in church every time the doors are open, and she's in charge of organizing the church potluck. She claims to be BFFs with the pastor's wife. She knows all the books of the Bible (but not many verses), and she knows all the hymns in the hymnal (except the ones she doesn't like). She's on every committee (that's important), and she volunteers to collect donations for the orphans in Apalachicola (wherever that is). She's such a good person!

The mask starts to slip, however, when the pastor calls out for prayer requests. The Church Lady always has a name or three ready, and she waits for one or two people to voice their requests before she delivers her gossip-disguised-as-a-prayer-request: 

"Y'all, please pray for my son to find another job. He's drowning in his wife's credit card debt."

"We need to pray for precious baby Kyleigh. Her mother needs to go to rehab because she's bad on drugs."

"I want to thank the Lord that my family hasn't been torn apart by homosexuality like the Nelsons'." 

Having done her duty to inform the congregation on who needs prayers (and why), she sits back and listens for the whispers and murmurs, and she'll linger a bit after the service to answer questions from the curious. 

After church, she'll go to Applebee's for lunch and offer sympathy to the server for having to work on a Sunday ("It's such a shame that they have you working on Sunday! They should be closed so people can go to church!"), then she'll leave a dollar tip and a tract about the evils of doing business on The Lord's Day. 

The "Church Lady" and scenario I just described is a caricature, but there are elements of her that exist in real people. I've witnessed the "gossip-disguised-as-a-prayer-request" during a church service more than once. As the kids say, "It's so cringe." (kids probably don't say that any more).

The point is (finally), everyone has something going on in their life that is difficult to handle. It may be debt, or drugs, or a family member's sexuality, or the loss of a spouse to cancer. No matter the issue, passing judgment on others' difficult situations instead of praying for them or offering support (in whatever form that may take) only serves to add more difficulty to their lives. Passing judgment is not beneficial, it's not kind, and it's not a Christian's job. 

Be blessed, and be a blessing! ✌💓🙏😊

Megan