Never has there been a medium so ideally suited for spreading gossip as social media. Never have Christians been so eager to hear an evil report about another Christian than they are today. And that means gossip, slander, and evil reports move further and faster than ever. This old warning seems even more relevant today than in the day it was issued. I plead with you to read it, to consider it, and to apply it.
There is only one person worse than the whisperer, and that is the man or woman who listens without protest. The trouble is you hold the sack while they fill it. The receiver of stolen goods is just as bad as the thief.
An ancient writer declares that a slanderer and a man who receives the slander ought both to be hanged—the one by the tongue and the other by the ear. And I agree with him.
When you hear something bad about your neighbors do not go all over and ask about it whether it is true, and scatter it, and spread it. You might as well go to a smallpox hospital and take a patient and carry him all through the community asking people if they really thought it a case of smallpox. That would be very bad for the patient and for all the neighbors.
Do not retail slanders and whisperings. Do not make yourself the inspector of warts, and the supervisor of carbuncles, and the commissioner for street-gutters, and the holder of stakes for a dog-fight. Can it be that you, an immortal man, that you, an immortal woman, can find no better business than to become a gutter inspector?
(Drawn from the sermons of De Witt Talmage)
