How to Stop Gossip Before It Spreads

Key takeaways

• Talk about ideas, not people. You can test a teaching without tearing down the person who gave it.
• Gossip wears out the people who produce it. Adam Mesa watched a job built on gossip drain someone he loved.
• Check your motives before you pass something on. Sharing a person's news can hurt them, even when you meant no harm.
• Take the story to the person it is about. Adam stops secondhand gossip and puts the two people in contact.
• Hurt calls for discernment, not withdrawal. Pulling away from everyone keeps the wound from healing.

Why gossip is easier than conversation

On this episode of Beyond the Letter, Pastor Adam Mesa and his co-hosts were talking about why the show is never scripted. Early on they tried a run of show built from clips, and Adam said that format might go viral but would not make a good conversation. Adam noted that it is much easier to produce and respond to gossip than to offer something you have really thought about.

He pointed out that many podcasts, Christian ones included, run on stories about another church or another leader, and most of those stories are only alleged. When the Beyond the Letter team picks up something noisy in the culture, they try to set the person aside. As Adam put it, “Let's remove this person. Let's talk about the concept they're teaching, or let's talk about the thing that they're promoting.”

He did not claim to be perfect at this. He admitted his flesh goes toward mocking a person at times, and he said that is the point where people cross the line. Criticizing an idea is fair. Picking apart someone's life, looks or success is something else.

What Ashley's TMZ job showed him

About thirteen years ago, two months into dating Ashley, Adam learned she had two job offers: one working with special needs kids and one as a news broadcaster for TMZ. He was a youth pastor then and told her he did not think the TMZ job was Christlike. She took it anyway, and by his memory she worked there about ninety days.

Adam described what the job demanded. She had to show up each morning with around eight leads, searching social media and calling contacts to ask whether a rumor was true. Then she worked into the evening finding leads for the next day. He said he sat there and thought, “gossip is exhausting”, because a person who produces it has to keep feeding it.

According to Adam, TMZ let her go for being too ethical. Friends also called to tear into her, and she cried over a lost friendship. “Gossip kills relationships,” Adam said, and he has carried a sensitivity to it ever since.

A slip he did not see coming

Adam also told a story against himself. He had talked with one pastor about another pastor, and he said it was not negative, just about that pastor's hopes and dreams. Soon mutual friends were being asked what Adam had said, and the pastor in question called him.

Adam apologized and kept apologizing, worried he had made a mess. The pastor was gracious and told him it was not gossip, that he only wanted the context. Adam realized the person who had asked him questions was fishing for information, though the questions had sounded sincere.

He could not fix that conversation. What he could do was be more aware of how that person asks about others. His reaction is worth noticing: he stopped to ask whether he had gossiped and whether his words might have slandered someone, before defending himself.

Seeing the person behind the screen

Adam described his family watching a competition show and rooting for some contestants to lose over a single moment on screen. He said he would never tell one of those people to their face that he wanted them to lose because they cried. At a table he would probably be compassionate and ask to pray for them.

He saw the same habit online, where people comment on who deserves whom and offer opinions they would never say to a face. He said it is easy to hide behind a screen, and that the attitude behind it is, “I'll dish it out all day, but don't give it back to me.” A screen hides that the other person has a real story and a real moment.

When gossip is handed to you

Adam recalled someone in ministry who always had the latest talk about him. He finally asked why people felt comfortable telling that person so much, and told them to send anyone with a concern to his email. Today, if someone brings him gossip about another person, he will stop and call that person so they can sort it out directly. Adam compared this to the idea of Matthew 18, going to the person itself, and he said people trying to “Matthew 18” someone online are not doing it right.

He learned this the hard way about ten years ago. Another couple told Adam and Ashley damaging things about friends of theirs, and the story seemed believable. They believed it, pulled away from the couple who had been described, and kept the couple who had been gossiping. Later, when everyone met in one room, the gossiping couple admitted they wanted a closer relationship with Adam and Ashley and wanted the other couple out of the way. “I got played for a sucker,” Adam said. He decided never to take such claims at face value again.

When the gossip is about you

Adam also talked about being on the receiving end. He once ended a friendship with a Christian friend who was hurting women, and a mutual friend then told people negative things about Adam. Adam had been paying that friend's phone bill and helping with his rent at the time. Later some people showed him the text messages and he saw that he had never said what was reported.

The lesson Adam drew was that “you cannot pay for love. You can't earn love.” He said that season showed him he had been leaning on being well liked to feel validated, when he should have been rooted in his identity in Christ.

A co-host said that after similar hurts he found it harder to trust people. Adam told him to pray for discernment rather than close himself off. The co-host thought of Solomon, who asked for wisdom and soon faced two women who could not both be telling the truth (1 Kings 3). He tied it to Jesus' words about being wise and gentle.

“Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

(Matthew 10:16, WEB)

Healing takes steps

Adam compared relational hurt to rehab after an injury. A physical therapist asks a patient to stand, then take a step, then walk a block. Someone who refuses and stays in the chair for two years cannot decide one day to run. In the same way, he said, you cannot sit on the sidelines after a friendship goes wrong and expect to be ready for a new one.

You will probably be hurt again, Adam said, so keep building wisdom, standards and boundaries, and keep making new friendships. If you stay on the sidelines, “That wound is still going to be there because you protected it.” A co-host added that Jesus treated people from his own character, not from how he hoped they would treat him, and that includes Judas.

What this means for you

Ask yourself a few plain questions the next time you are about to share news about someone. Why am I saying this? Would I say it with that person in the room? Does the listener have a reason to hear it?

If someone hands you a story about another person, you can decline to carry it, or you can send them to the person it concerns. And if you have been hurt by gossip, pray for discernment and keep taking small steps toward people, because wisdom and openness can go together.