Gossipers?

Ask them to stop and/or remove yourself from the conversation.

 

Seems like it's all in the eyes of the beholder!

Things like this below, is thought by some to be gossip and by others a prayer request:

My personal feeling is that it's a valid prayer request with just enough info for someone to know how to pray.

 

I don't think we need a lot of details to pray for someone. I have trouble with someone telling me about someone else's problems.

If the individual involved wants to confide in me and ask for prayer that is one thing, but I am really uncomfortable with a third person telling me all the details of another person's problem.

Just recently, a friend called to tell me that she has liver cancer. She gave me permission to tell others requesting prayer, I would not have told anyone that she had liver cancer if she had not given me permission to tell others.

A health problem may not be gossip as much as a marital problem. Do we need to know all the details in order to pray? I think not.

I really don't know the line that divides a prayer request and gossip.

Perhaps, if one gives the details for prayer without mentioning the names of the people...

Now back to the OP. One should try to avoid gossip by changing the subject or avoiding a person who gossips.

 

Thankful,
Don't we need to know the basis of the prayer request if we are going to agree with someone in prayer??? Not the gory details, granted, but the basic problem.

I've know people to ask that I pray for them in agreement and then not want to tell me what it is that we are agreeing on in prayer.

I think Christians need to know that they are not praying against scripture when they agree with someone in prayer. Thus, knowing the basics and even some of the details helps to focus that prayer to it's most effective end.

Not disagreeing with you, just clarifying, I think.

 

Rachel, was there anything on these boards that made you start your thinking about the subject of gossiping??? If so, are you making a statement about gossiping because of what was said in another thread??? And, if so again, did you know that ulterior motives are really wolves in sheeps' clothing???

 

Good points, BillyMac. I really do have a problem with this so any input is appreciated.

Many times, I am very uncomfortable in prayer meeting when a person goes on and on about the details of a third party who is not present at the meeting. Now you realize that our pastor and many deacons are there and they don't seem to mind, but I do have questions...

I think in the case where we don't really know any details...such as unspoken requests. We can pray that God will guide this person. God will know if it is against scripture or His will. I really don't think we have to know, but again...maybe we do. This is something I am still working out for myself and yes, I pray about it.

I have had convictions to pray at certain times and I didn't know what to pray or why I was praying, but I prayed.

Sorry to get off topic, but I still think that some prayer requests are gossip.

 

One sure way to stop the person when you hear them gossip is to tell them that it is important for the other person to hear their complaint and then walk over to the person if they are at church. If the other person is not at church tell the person you are talking with that you will make an appointment with the person so both of you can visit that person.

 

Years ago when I was working, it seemed that every coffee break consisted of a few women talking about their boss. You can guess they didn't like him so everything that he did was wrong. One day, I started talking about this boss, but telling all the good things I could think of about him. Do you know that there was never another word said in my presence about this boss? They did not want to hear good things about him, only bad.

Just tell the person that you don't want to hear "whatever it is that they are gossiping about". Use the direct approach. It really does work. Change the subject. Say something good about the person.

 

The dictionary has a couple of definitions concerning the word gossip.

to speak about others and reveal secrets
malicious talk about others
light hearted speech concerning others

This kind of thing is extremely harmful to Christians, and happens regularly, yet seems excused by a number of people.

For example, if someone posts a problem and another person begins mocking that problem in other conversation, it can be classified as gossip.
Or say, one person feels upset at another so they start making sly remarks about that person's dwelling place or such. Also considered gossip.

101:5 Whoso privily slandereth his neighbor, him will I cut off; him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer.

It's not something God looks lightly on.

It was the first method Satan himself used on humans, and humans picked it up and continue it today. Gossipers can rightly be called Satan's little helpers, and will have their own special place right by his side with the murderers (which they are compared to in the Bible) and others who harm God's children and cause them grief.

 

Amen, mareese!

Gossip was the root cause of why Jeanne and I had to leave our chruch. But you know what God has taken that and sent us to what so far appears to be a better place at a new church.

If gossip is destroying something it may just be a sign at there is evil about. Pray and God will lead you where He wan'ts you to go.

Bill

 

Thankful,

When I was a newly wed I worked with people who were always badmouthing their spouses, and making jokes about them while they were gone. One day, when they were making jokes about how their spouse complained they felt unloved, I blurted out, "Well, they are. Listen at how you talk about them." A few days later one of the men came to me and said, "I never realized how much I was putting my wife down in the name of "good ole boy" until you said that to me. She really is wonderful, I hope I didn't leave the impression she wasn't."

Speak up.

 

TexasSky,

I agree.

I dislike for spouses to badmouth each other even in a joking manner. We should always speak good of the ones we love. If one has a problem with them, then keep it private.

 

Sometimes, in the midst of trying to stop gossip I find myself participating in it. YUK!!

 

For years I have assumed that gossip meant the same thing as "hearsay"-- passing on information of which the passer has not first-hand knowledge, but has simply "heard." Therefore it does not take many repeats to become embellished and distorted, sometimes has little relation to the incident upon which it is based, if indeed there was an incident. Having checked 2 dictionaries, I am rather surprised that it is defined as revealing malicious, scalndalizing, or embarrassing info about people with no bearing as to first-hand knowledge or 4th-hand embellishment.

Maybe the way I define gossip came from Ricky Ricardo, when once on the I Love Lucy show he and Fred made a bet, husbands against wives, that the first ones caught gossping had to serve the others breakfast in bed for a month. So Ricky and Fred pretended to talk in their sleep about a building tenant, a married woman, who was planning to run away with the milk man . The women couldn't keep their mouths shut, while the husbands eavesdropped and 'caught them gossiping.' Lucy contended that the men gossped first by planting the "phony story," but Ricky explained that it was not gossip on their part because they made it up, and the women were gossiping because they believed it was true and passed on what they thought they knew. So, by the dictionaries' definitions, Lucy was right and the men were gossiping first. [In the end, Lucy paid off the milkman and the woman's husband to stage an act giving legitamacy to the story, so the women would win the bet.]

Nevertheless, the purpose of gossip is to present a person as being weak, selfish, irresponsible, oversexed, et al, so the fine definition should not matter. If we believe the Word of God, we already know people are like that because it's our nature, against which we struggle daily. We just take away our own ability to win that battle if we get envious to show how someone else is losing it worse than we are.

Incidentally, is one purpose of fiction, like I Love Lucy, so that we can do some gossiping or scandalizing about characters we know, but it's alright because they're not real?

 

Have you ever heard of speaking things into existence???

In the 33 years I've been married to my wife, I haven't always been a very good husband. In fact, there have been times that I belly ached about how she was not giving me enough attention (if you married people know what I am talking about). But my wife has witnessed on the job to her co-workers that if they want their husbands to stop paying them any mind just go ahead and bad mouth him all over the work place and sooner or later it would all come crashing down. I don't believe my wife has had one bad thing to say about me to her peers or anyone else. Usually she speaks highly of me and I speak highly of her. Lord knows, there would never have been any other woman who would've put up with me for more than 30 years the way she has. She knows it and I have told her so ....... often.

 

I have a question reqarding this issue. This is something (the definition, that is) that I am "struggling" with myself.

1Co 5:1 ¶ It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.

Is Paul gossiping, or was the person(s) who told this to Paul gossiping?

What say ye?
-DeaconLew

 

Rachel, was there anything on these boards that made you start your thinking about the subject of gossiping??? If so, are you making a statement about gossiping because of what was said in another thread??? And, if so again, did you know that ulterior motives are really wolves in sheeps' clothing??? </font>[/QUOTE]