eGossip is Still Gossip & God Hates It

        I read an interesting blog by a Methodist pastor in Alabama about eGossip.  A friend emails you something that makes your blood boil, or makes you afraid, or breaks your heart.  Since the person who sent it to you is above suspicion in your eyes you forward it right away.  The problem is that many or most of these just aren't true.  Passing along political gossip, religious gossip, and even some versions of celebrity or important people gossip--without taking the time to verify it--is still gossip.  And gossip is roundly condemned again and again by God in our scriptures.
       It's like the story about a man who passes along a choice bit of gossip that deeply wounds someone, someone who ends up being entirely innocent of what was said about her.  In fact, the story damages her reputation in the eyes of their mutual circle of friends and the man feels terrible about it.  He goes to his pastor and asks what he can do to take it back, to make it all better.  The pastor tells him to take a down pillow, slice it open, and put a handful of down feathers on the front stoop of everyone who was touched or deceived by the gossip he passed on.  
       He comes back to the pastor and says, "Now what?"  The pastor says, "Go back and gather up all the feathers--and don't miss a single one."  It becomes apparent to the man very quickly that he cannot get those feathers back.  It turned out to be a blustery day and the feathers have been scattered everywhere.  He does the best he can, but he comes back to the pastor more or less empty handed.  "I can't get them all back," he blurts out, "So what do I do now?"
      The pastor then says just like you cannot get those feathers back after taking them out and spreading them around, you can't go back and retrieve the harm your gossip has produced.  But, the pastor said, it doesn't mean that you don't try.  "You go back and apologize to the one you've hurt and beg her forgiveness. But before you do that, you need to do your best to figure out who was harmed by what you passed along. It's your job to correct the impression you gave.  And then, of course, you don't ever do anything like that again."
      Once you negatively alter someone's perspective--prejudice or poison someone's view of another--it's almost impossible to get all of the poison out of their system.  It doesn't matter if they are an acquaintance or the President or the Governor or a movie star.  Gossip is almost always false witness.  Gossip may even be true.  Having a juicy piece of knowledge that others don't have is intoxicating, that is it is intoxicating when you share it. But is it noble?  Is it building up or tearing down?  Are you yourself above similar reproach in your personal life?  Is this how you would want others to treat you or your husband, or your son, your best friend?
       I am personally tired of the paranoid conspiracies of the political left and right being passed around as truth.  I really get worried when stories about missing children are sent around--where someone might actually go out and try to help--when the story is ten years old.  I think I'm going to scream if I get another forwarded email about how Hollywood, or the government, or the Target Stores are running God out of the public square.  God doesn't need to be in the public square--God needs to be in the lives and homes of faithful women and men.  God needs to be alive and well and at work through God's church.  If the celebration of the birth of Christ has to rely on a department store standing up for Christmas, then we've got a lot bigger problems than holiday greetings.
     I always tell myself, "They mean well."  But I wonder if God differentiates between well intended gossip and the garden variety gossip that is batted around.
     Please check out the web site snopes.com before you send something along--no matter how innocuous it may seem.  Please be careful what goes out from you on social media:  facebook, twitter, email, texts.  It is so easy and immediate to just push send that often what we send has a very different effect than what we may have first thought.  Once a piece of gossip travels from your phone or computer out into cyberspace it is not only beyond your control and ability to take it back, but in many ways it can become a permanent byte of data that will live far beyond your frustration, anger, or rash judgment of the moment.
    If you'd like to read the full blog about egossip, check out:
http://www.churchandtea.com/2012/11/avoiding-egossip/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChurchAndTea+%28Church+and+Tea%29

Thank God the election's Over--the challenge of working together begins

   I'm like a lot of you.  I'm glad it's over.  I don't know how many more of the nasty election ads I could have handled.  I know that elections is to end up with winners and losers.  I don't imagine anyone is completely satisfied with yesterday's results.  But elections do have consequences in a democracy and I guess we will all have to watch those consequences unfold for good and for ill.

    Here's what I was thinking though today.  The election is over but the hard work of being a United States or a United nation has really just begun.  There are real problems and I have to believe that there are more reasonable ways to address those problems than what how we've been trying to meet or avoid them up to this point.

   Actually, this is what I thought today.  I thought how glad I am that Jesus died for me.  And then I thought how sad I am that Jesus died because of me.  It was my sin, my brokenness, my willful rebellion that required his sacrifice.  And I realized that moving forward as a citizen of this country--as well as a citizen of God's Kingdom--that I am a beneficiary of all the good things that go along with being a part of this great country.  I am blessed beyond measure as a child of God.  But I am also responsible for the mess we find ourselves in.  It's not a Republican fault or a Democratic fault--it's a human fault and we all share it.  Tony Campolo once said something to the effect that there is no Us and They.  There is no Me and Them.  There is just a line running down the center of who I am reflecting the bad and the good.  I am gentle and I am harsh.  I am kind and I am self-centered.  I am the best and the worst of what God intends me to be.

   I'm just thinking it is time for us to own up to our complicity in the problems that we face as a people.  It is time to put love ahead of blame and dismissiveness.  We've got a lot of hard work to do and I hope that as followers of Jesus we can show the world what real compromise and cooperation looks like.  Maybe it's at times like these that we have a chance to let that infamous light shine in ways that might not have ever been apparent to Jesus in his day and time.

   I offer the following prayer as a model for moving forward after a bitter, divisive and decidedly ruthless political season.  I think of it as the Prayer of 'Get Over Yourself'.  Policy and economics, taxes and entitlements, rights and responsibilities aren't some kind of football game in which everybody lines up on one side of the field or the other.  It's about people's lives.  It's about living together in close proximity.  It's about duty, integrity, and compassion.  So why don't we let it go and get over ourselves as soon as we possibly can.  This prayer has helped  me in that direction.  It's one of my favorites and I think it works pretty well under the circumstances.  It's attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve; 
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.