Gossip Pushers and Junkies Hurt Everyone

This morning, for my quiet time, the passage of Scripture on which I camped was Proverbs 18:1-8. (You can find those verses here.)

The temptation when we read passages like these is to start thinking of all the people "out there" who are unfriendly, who gossip, who spout opinions without the facts, who trap themselves in their own self-centered verbiage. 

But the moment such thoughts sneak up on me is the one in which I need to say, "God, what are You telling me in these words?" 

Verse 8 brought across to me the importance of refraining from anything like gossip. It says: "The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts."

There are several important points to remember when considering this wisdom given by God through Solomon.

First: From the Christian perspective, the gossip we pass on to others may be factually true or factually untrue. The thing that makes gossip gossip isn't its facticity; it's whether the gossip is less than charitable toward the subject of the gossip. 

In his explanation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor," Martin Luther says in The Small Catechism: 

We should fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, lie, or gossip about our neighbors, but defend them, speak well of them, and put the most charitable construction on all that they do.

Gossip is designed to denigrate other human beings, questioning things like their integrity, trustworthiness, or intelligence. And defending gossip by saying, "But it's all true," is, in the eyes of God, no defense.

Second: When we gossip, according to Proverbs 18:8, we are feeding people "choice morsels." Gossip is like a slowly-but-surely acting poison wrapped in chocolate and it becomes part of the person who receives it, distorting their views of those being gossiped about and those who pass on the gossip. Gossip harms its recipients spiritually, diminishing their capacity for love. 

A common saying is, "You are what you eat." As Christians who trust that Christ is truly present in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, we believe that, as we receive Christ's in, with, and under the bread and the wine, Christ actually enters us, working to transform us from the inside out. Just so, gossip we receive with credulity stays with us and sets to work to lure us into sin and pride, to corrode our trust in God and others, to make us cynical, separating us from God and from others.

Gossip is horrible stuff: The one who gossips is like a drug pusher; the credulous recipient is an addicted junkie; and the entire process of gossip transmission and reception, like any other addiction, has a destructive impact on all who encounter pusher or junkie. 

We need to pray both that God would keep us from engaging in gossip and from giving it a place in our lives. 

At least this is how God spoke to me in this verse today. What do you think?

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

When you break a promise

"Due to circumstances beyond our control." That's the phrase that popped into my mind this morning during my quiet time when I read words of the apostle Paul addressed to the first-century Christian churches in Corinth and Achaia.

There, Paul is explaining why he'd been forced to break his promise to come visit them, not because he wasn't good for his word but because circumstances had changed. But, ever the preacher of Christ, even in the midst of this explanation, Paul couldn't keep from pointing out how reliable the God we know through Christ always is:

Confident of your welcome, I had originally planned two great visits with you—coming by on my way to Macedonia province, and then again on my return trip. Then we could have had a bon-voyage party as you sent me off to Judea. That was the plan.

Are you now going to accuse me of being flip with my promises because it didn’t work out? Do you think I talk out of both sides of my mouth—a glib yes one moment, a glib no the next? Well, you’re wrong. I try to be as true to my word as God is to his. Our word to you wasn’t a careless yes canceled by an indifferent no. How could it be? When Silas and Timothy and I proclaimed the Son of God among you, did you pick up on any yes-and-no, on-again, off-again waffling? Wasn’t it a clean, strong Yes? 

Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete. (2 Corinthians 1:15-22, The Message)

Though my team and I were incapable of making good on our yes, Paul seems to say, remember two things:

(1)We always proclaimed God's "yes" to repentant believers in Christ;
(2) Even when humans fail to keep their promises, when God says "yes" to a promise, you can bank your life on it.

God calls imperfect human beings--which includes every believer in Christ--to share the message of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and trustingly follow Jesus. But our faith is not in the imperfect disciples who strive and sometimes fail in their promise-keeping. Our faith is in the God Who, as seen in Christ, always keeps His promises.

I think that this has several implications for the way we live our lives if we confess Christ to be our God and Savior.

First, it means that we need to be judicious in our promise-making. We should only make those promises that we think we are going to be able to keep. When we're associated with Christ, identified by others as Christians, we must remember that we are "ambassadors for Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:20) and strive, as Jesus tells us to "Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil" (Matthew 5:37).

Second, we need to be charitable and understanding when circumstances beyond the control of those from whom we feel we have promises are unable to keep them. This is especially the case when they may be unable to keep their promise to us because of another promise they have made to God. This appears to be the explanation that Paul offers in these verses from 2 Corinthians 1. His extenuating circumstances aren't things like, "Oops! We overslept." Or, "We were having such a great time here, it seemed such a shame to go tearing off to Corinth."

No, Paul says, "I try to be as true to my word as God is to his." Especially when a person has a good track record for keeping promises, we should be understanding when they don't fulfill a promise. Especially when a promise to God may supersede their promise to us. As with Paul and his crew who faced persecution and the call of God to remain where they were rather than heading to see the Corinthians, we should be understanding of those who try to be as true to their word as God is to His Word.

That leads to a third implication in Paul's word to the Corinthians: God is the only One Who ever has kept or ever will keep all His promises. God's Word alone is completely reliable. Even the most well-meaning people flub up. God never flubs up! Isaiah 40:8, says: "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever." One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Psalm 118:8, which says: "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in humans."

And here's a fourth implication: Not only should we be judicious, careful, about making promises, we should repent both for careless promise-making and for godly promises broken. We should apologize both to God--because, as C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, whenever we sin (and carelessly breaking a promise is a sin, a violation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness"), we sin chiefly against God--and to the person to whom we've made our unfulfilled promise.

Of course, repentance means more than saying we're sorry for committing sin; it also means turning to God in the name of Jesus, receiving God's forgiveness, and allowing the Holy Spirit to this aspect of our lives to help us live more faithfully. In our Lutheran tradition, when we install people into positions of responsibility in our congregations, these people are asked to make a series of promises to God and the congregation. And with each promise, they pledge to seek to fulfill those promises by saying, "Yes, with the help of God."

And what do we do if we truly repent before God and truly apologize to people for our broken promises and people refuse to forgive us?

• For one thing, don't allow yourself to remain angry about it. Understand that your broken promise may have caused real hurt to the other person. This is especially so when you've had a track record of promise-keeping with them. When a person routinely breaks promises to us, we think, "That's them." But when someone has usually been reliable breaks a promise, the disappointment is great. Be understanding of how the person to whom we've made a broken promise feels. 
• Also, pray for reconciliation. Ask God to work in both of your lives to make it possible for your relationship to be restored. Ask also that God will banish bitterness from your thinking. Ask God also if there are any further steps you should take. Usually, there are no further steps to be taken; you must simply pray and wait.
• Finally, ask God to help you to be a more reliable promise-maker in the future.

As someone who has been known to make promises that I've gone on to break and sometimes, unlike Paul in these verse from 2 Corinthians, out of carelessness, I'm glad that there is One Whose promises can always be counted on.

When Jesus came into this world to die and to rise for the benefit of sinful human beings, He fulfilled the promises of God. And His death and resurrection are the guarantors of all the other promises He makes, from the promise to always be with those who follow Him in this world to the promise to prepare a place for His disciples in eternity.

So, I will ask God's help in being judicious and faithful in my promise-making and promise-keeping.

I will seek, with the help of God, to forgive others as God forgives me, when they seem to fail in keeping the promises they have made to me.

But, I will trust the God revealed in Jesus and in the promises He makes in His Word, the Bible, above all else.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Contentious or quarrelsome husbands are just the same...

From this week's Bible readings:

A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike; to restrain her is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in one's right hand. (Proverbs 27:15-16)

If you've ever been around anyone who argues to "show up" a spouse, or to be "clever" while playing the spouse as less than so, or, in order to, by their words, set a group against a wife or a husband, you know exactly what these verses are addressing.

It's serious business. (And like many serious passages of Scripture that use vivid or exaggerated imagery, these verses make their serious point hilariously.)

But more to the point of Proverbs 27:15-16, there's good reason to wonder whether spouses like the ones described here are really married. By that I mean that I wonder how committed to their marriages and to the persons to whom they're married people like this really are.

One reason I wonder is that the eighth commandment, with its proscription against gossip, in Martin Luther's phrasing, calls us to "fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, lie, or gossip about our neighbors, but defend them, speak well of them, and put the most charitable construction on all they do."

If all of this applies to our neighbors everywhere else in the world--from the person next door to the occupant of the White House--how much more does it apply to married people treat the neighbors with whom they share a bed?

Contentious and quarrelsome spouses, in breaking the eighth commandment with repeated impunity, as I have often observed, also break their marriages in ways that bring misery to Christian spouses who take both the eighth commandment and their marriage vows seriously. "My husband [or, my wife]," they may think, "isn't married. But I am." And so they feel compelled to stay in their non-marriages and make the best of their lives. It's sad and it's brave all at once.

Maybe we pastors would be well advised to use Exodus 20:16, where the eighth commandment appears, along with Proverbs 27:15-16, applying the latter to both quarrelsome wives and husbands, for our next wedding sermons instead of 1 Corinthians 13.

It might catch someone's interest and warn some newlywed husband or wife to seek God's help in refraining from being like incessant dripping on a rainy day, unrestrained in their never-ceasing nastiness.

It might even stop some non-marriages from happening in the first place.

Just a thought.

Speak Life by Toby Mac

This video for Toby Mac's song was just released this past week. Love this song. Watch for the quote from Brendan Manning at the end.



According to Martin Luther, the Eighth Commandment--"Do not bear false witness against your neighbor"--commands us not just to refrain from lying about others, but also obligates us to be affirming of them. In The Small Catechism, Luther writes about the deeper meaning of this command:

We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.

More importantly, Jesus teaches that when we berate others or treat them as though they didn't exist or as though we didn't want them to exist, we're guilty of murder.

Instead, we're to speak life!

"As followers of Jesus Christ, we want the words that flow from our hearts and out of our mouths to be...life-giving..."

That's a quote from today's installment from Our Daily Bread. It's worth reading. The New Testament passage on which it's based is Ephesians 4:25-32:

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

These words from God's Word imply, among other things, that we are both to lovingly tell others the truth about the reality of our sin AND the truth about Jesus, Who brings forgiveness of sin and everlasting life to all who believe in Him. 

Whether we tell it to those who are part of the Christian family or to those not yet experiencing the new life that only Jesus Christ can give, everybody needs to hear and to be reminded of the truth that "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). We also need to hear and be reminded that:

the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets [that is, by the two major strands of Old Testament writings], the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood effective through faith...[God] justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26)

God's call and command that we who follow Jesus "speak the truth in love," also means, in Martin Luther's words in his explanation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" that:

We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.

I don't mean to imply that the sort of truth-telling to which believers are called is in any way possible to do when we rely on our own will power or strength of character. The self-reliant can never, in the guts of everyday life, experience the truth of the promise of Jesus that "with God, all things are possible." 

In the face of derision and the pressures of "political correctness," we all would rather do almost anything than speaks God's truth...and usually will. 

But we can tell the truth and come back to the truth that Jesus calls us to tell and to live when we rely on God. God-reliance will always empower us to to be the people that self-reliance only deludes itself into thinking it can achieve!


When it comes to sharing the truth about sin and forgiveness, about life and death, about heaven and hell though, we Christians are all to be proclaimers of the truth. 

Some will be called to tell it from the pulpit. Others are commissioned by Christ to tell this truth while kicking back with friends in those conversations that, as conversations with good friends always do, drift into the subjects that really matter. 

We Christians who withhold the truth about Jesus, that He is, "the way, and the truth, and the life," from our neighbors--even the "neighbors" in our own homes, the "neighbors" with whom we watch ball games, shop at the mall, share cubicles at work, or have a drink--are not fulfilling our sacred obligation or experiencing the unique joy that comes from telling others about Jesus. 

In that sense then, every Christian is commissioned by Jesus, in a sensitive and caring way, to be a preacher of the good word--the good news--about Christ. Paul puts it simply in Romans:

...how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are hey to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?...not all have obeyed the good news [that is, believed in the gospel that life and forgiveness come to those who repent of sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ]; for Isaiah [the Old Testament prophet] says, 'Lord, who has believed our message?' So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of the Lord.

Beyond this special and important truth, we are to tell all truth to others, not in a desire to hurt, but to build up others. When tempted to "tell the truth" about those we dislike or who dislike us, those whose integrity or intelligence we may question, and anyone with whom we may be angry or not in sync, the Ephesians 4 passage tells us that we should consider a great option: Keeping our traps shut. This is true whether we're speaking to them directly or when speaking to others about them.

By all means, when we have conflicts with others and the cause, the relationship, and the stakes are important enough to us, we should lovingly "have it out" with the other person. Otherwise again, we should keep our traps shut.

It's passages from God's Word like Ephesians 4, that make my daily prayers of repentance so long!

They're also the reason behind one of my most frequent prayer requests. In many situations I face, I ask God to cause me to speak the right words and to keep the right silences and to know the difference. And I find that when I trustingly get out of God's way, God answers that prayer.

That's how I know, by the way, that God does impossible things: I've learned that God can use an imperfect sinner like me to bring His life to others. If that's not some sort of miracle, I don't know what is.