“A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of friends.”
What’s a little gossip around the Keurig machine really? A morsel here and there makes the day more interesting doesn’t it? I can’t wait to text and tell what I just heard about so and so and who they were with over lunch today. It feels good to be the first to post what was just overheard in the hallway about impending organization changes coming. Oh, these temptations to become a “Whisperer” (Jim VandeHei’s term). Whisperers are always trading on rumors and gossip with each opportunity they can find. Their currency is information that shouldn’t be shared because more often or not it isn’t true and at the worst it is private and being used to influence a point of view or position, or undermine another person. We know whisperers and we also know that their mainstay lifeline is us when we feed them by listening and passing along the gossip. Another watchout with whisperers is that what they are saying about other people, they are saying the same about us. Because we think they are good co-workers or friends does not protect us. Whisperers must whisper and gossip and we are just as ripe of material as the next person.
Solomon was wise. He knew our hearts and our tendencies. He knew that we like to trade in gossip and rumors and while he may not have imagined it, God knew that someday industries (big ones) would be built upon gossip. So, God gave us in His word a warning. We are not to be gossipers for doing so will ruin our lives. Ruin, you say? Yes, for what we don’t know is the life that God had in store for us but we never saw it because we continued to ignore and/or disobey His commands for our lives. So, this might be an easy one for some and harder for others but for all of us we should not become one of the office whisperers.
Reference: Proverbs 16:28