The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body.
Gossip tastes awesome. Secrets intrigue us, particularly when they’re the sort of secrets we know we shouldn’t know. Did you know that the neighbor is having money troubles? Did you know that the other neighbor is trying to have an affair? Did you know…. The secrets, whispered or stated innocuously amidst a social event or splattered across the internet, have the frisson of the forbidden, the prestigious, the pleasurable (like most sins, gossip has something of the addictive). We need to understand why gossip is so appealing; we need to understand why it is so dangerous.
Being on the inner circle is a thrill. C.S. Lewis wrote of this human fascination in That Hideous Strength (a book well worth your time to read). There, the fascination with joining the inner circle draws Mark into a perilous situation, perched in the back teeth of the monster’s maw while it prepares to devour the world. Gossip appeals to this instinct as well, if often to less fantastic (if no less dramatic) consequences.
Gossip draws the hearer into a phantasmal society of ‘people in the know.’ I know; you probably don’t. The secrecy and the wrongness of the knowledge assures us that we are different from those who don’t know. The same mechanism provides assurance to the cult member who is initiated into a higher rung of gnosis, hidden knowledge. He is worthy; those who do not, by implication, are not. This theological gossip tugs on the same strings that mundane gossip tugs on, in a little different direction. Both are “words of a whisperer” which manipulate these “inner parts” of our psyches, tempting us through our sin.
Gossip also provides power. Blackmail is the most straightforward way to use this, probably, or using slander to advantage oneself in competition with the slandered. The mere potential for that power, however, is often the most tempting part of the arrangement. We like to think ourselves above dirty things like blackmail, after all, but we are conscious that we could. And we like looking down on other people as our tools, if we wished.
Part and parcel to gossip, moreover, is the prestige it grants, internal and external. I’m better than you tastes sweet on the tongue. The scandal which gossip provides for us is an assurance that we are better, morally or pragmatically, than the person we’re gossiping about. We know, too, that sharing the information is wrong, which makes the person we’re hearing it from a sinner, and we know that desiring gossip is wrong, which makes the people we tell it to sinners. We’re very good at ignoring that these two categories include us ourselves, at ignoring our sin while we condemn the sin of others (Matt. 7:5). Thus gossip provides prestige internally by making everybody else dirtier and lesser in our eyes, raising ourselves by default.
As for external prestige, sharing or hinting at gossip is a means of demonstrating power over others (both by the gossip itself and by the implication that ‘there’s more where that came from’), and power, in the mind of fallen man, is prestige (Mark 10:42). Simply being on the inner circle is a form of prestige (and power), and gossip creates an inner circle, however phantasmal it is.
The odd paradox of gossip and inner circles is that secrecy is essential to the scandal which makes it all attractive, to the prestige and the power, to the exclusivity, but all that power and prestige and scandal only matters if everybody else knows about it. So secret societies across history are a dime a dozen (including the historical Illuminati, the Free Masons, Scientology, the vigilante gangs borrowed by Sir Walter Scott for Anne of Geierstein, the various conspirators operating in the modern world (Gates, etc.), and more). All these institutions gain power and prestige from being secret, from holding secrets, but they are generally desperate to advertise that fact, including much of their membership and methods, because what’s the point of being in the inner circle if nobody outside said circle knows? Much less, in the eyes of many; after all, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” (Albright[1]).
So much for the appeal of gossip; what’s the Christian’s antidote to all this temptation?
First, we must remember that gossip, by its nature, is a pack of lies. It’s a string of unreliable witnesses playing telephone, adding and removing bits as they like, with a starting seed that may or may not be truthful at all. The Bible doesn’t require that we get multiple witnesses before believing something (though two witnesses are the minimum for a judicial determination (Deut. 19:15)), but its wisdom does remind us to check our sources (Jude 4-23), to demand evidence at least proportional to the seriousness of the claim (Deut. 17:16).
Second, we must practice Christian humility: the lived awareness of our relationship to Him and to our fellow man and to His creation in general. We have no need to be part of an inner circle; we have already the fulfillment of what legitimate need underlies such ambition, for we are heirs to God Himself (James 2:5), part of the body of Christ (Rom. 12:5). Further, we must turn aside from the thirst for power and for prestige which the world drowns in. We need only the power He appoints us to wield, sufficient to our responsibilities. Desiring more is desiring His power, which is idolatry. We need only the prestige He gives us; desiring more is desiring to wield His authority (for the weight of prestige, besides its power, is in its authority). This desire too is idolatry.
Live in humility. Do not let the whispered words slide deep within. Burn out the temptation and avoid the danger (Mark 9:33-50). Gossip is poison; slander and lies are the work of the father of lies (John 8:44), who is the world’s father. We have as our Father the Lord Almighty (Is. 64:8). Why should we work the works of His foe? And if you do not have the Lord as your Father: “Return to the Lord… for He will abundantly pardon” (Is. 55:7).
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/10/18/remembering-powells-revealing-exchange-with-madeleine-albright/
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.
