Proverbs 16:28 ESV
A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+16%3A28&version=ESV]
We all like to think that our relationships are ironclad, incapable of breaking down. We all know, when we’re not deliberately closing our eyes, that while our relationships may be strong, some of them nearly unbreakable, they only stay that way through investment and care. Sure, we can stay friendly with acquaintances and random co-workers with minimal work, being polite and remembering their names, but when it comes to the relationships that really matter, with friends, with family, with spouses, with the ones were really love and rely on, we must take the time to care for the other person actively. In such a circumstance, it greatly behooves us to consider the danger this proverb lays out: the whisperer who separates close friends.
Whispers, rumors, gossip, and lies, all of them are venom in a relationship’s veins. If we do not take care, lies seep into our understanding of each other, emotions ride high, and the whole affair goes up with an earth-shattering KABOOM, no Pu-36 needed. Or, in some ways just as bad, the relationship wilts, sputters, and dies a lingering death, leaving a residue of pain and anger and puzzlement. This all can happen, moreover, from the smallest of starts.
Gossip and lies need little room to start making large problems. In ancient China, when they needed to split boulders, one of the methods involved slipping small slips of wood into cracks, then soaking the wood so that it expanded- not much, just enough. Then the rock, mighty and beyond any man’s hope to split by main force, would split open, all because of those little wedges, those little pressures from within. Relationships, when left unattended, too easily end up in a similar state. Gossip and lies find purchase in us when they find the little bits of envy, of fear, of wounded pride, of anger, of self-aggrandizement, that we in our sin still retain. It is because of these vices that the gossip and the lie are appealing, and it is by these that the issue comes. See, once we listen to the whispers, the wedge swells. The vice grows stronger, wrenching apart the relationship. All too quickly the whole affair is shot through with the color of our sin, tinting every interaction to fuel itself. Without care, the results are easily fatal to the relationship, terrible for both participants.
We must take precautions against this, obviously, but that’s easier said than done. What, actually, are we to do? It’s easy enough to say ‘don’t listen to lies or gossip,’ but it’s also useless. If we recognized it as malicious, we hopefully wouldn’t be listening to it in the first place (if we recognize it as malicious and listen regardless, that in itself is a problem). Thankfully, Scripture gives us a number of countermeasures, steps we can take in all parts of our relationships whenever conflict appears. Note that conflict isn’t just ‘fighting,’ here; it can also be when you hear something about a friend that makes you think less of them, or when they do something that hurts you, even without apparent knowledge of the fact.
First, in all controversies, listen to both sides before making up your mind. Proverbs 18:17 is the go-to text, here: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” This doesn’t mean that whoever speaks first is necessarily wrong. He might be entirely in the right (though usually in a real controversy there’s some blame on both sides, unevenly shared). The meaning is this: get all the facts (including, let’s be clear, the facts neither side is interested in explaining, because there’s always at least three sides to a controversy: Person A, Person B, and God, who has the truth of it) before you decide what you think. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to make an early call- if a friend comes and tells me his brother is trying to murder him, I’ll take precautions against the possibility that it’s true, assuming the statement is at all plausible- but such a tentative conclusion must be held tentatively, in recognition of its imperfection.
Second, we must handle our reaction and our sense of proportionality. God calls us to be ‘slow to anger’ (Prov. 14:29). We must not hold ourselves so high we can so none others. We must, indeed, take care to see ourselves as low as God sees us (Ps. 106:43) and as high (Ps. 8:5-6). When we have the impulse to be offended or hurt or angry or afraid, we must pause and set the situation to measure against the standard of Him and His law and His creation. How big a deal is it, for one who has His light to see with? What response is justice, rather than mere satisfaction?
Third, we must seek clarity in the whole affair. Therefore, in looking at others, we must not assume they are simply strange versions of ourselves. Other people are different people. We must understand them as such; in this search, empathy is our ally. We must have caution with empathy, though. To see ourselves in their shoes is necessary to understanding their position, to finding the truth, but we may not then act as if we were in their shoes or indeed in our own shoes only. The whole point of empathy was to find the truth of how they see it; if we treat ‘how they see it’ as ‘how God sees it’, then we’re just back to square one of not having the truth. Empathy must be a tool of investigation, not motivation or decision.
The other half of clarity is communication, both listening and hearing. I must listen to what is intended, not merely what is said; I must take care that what I say, in word and deed and tone and face, is clear not merely to me but to the one who hears it. I must ask what the other person hears when I speak, then work to make sure that what they hear is what I intend (and that what I intend is the truth).
Fourth and finally, we must take care that we ourselves are not introducing poison. Lies, comfortable or not, are poisons in a relationship. Gossip and whispers and lies can be tempting fare to set out, and whether we’re the initiator of the practice or merely responding to others, it can seem a small thing to peddle one or two fabrications, one or two exaggerations, one or two colored-to-falsity incidents. I have felt the temptation; I have at times submitted to it. By God’s grace, though, we will set ourselves against it.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.