It seems to me that sometimes the web allows us to do things and say things we would not normally do and say in public. In many ways this can be good. I have met many a person who has found incredible social freedom as a result of a blog or facebook page.

There is a darker side to the whole thing though…the feeding of the voracious monster of gossip. These days it seems to be more prevalent than usual but certainly this is due to circumstance.

There is something about the cyber-distance of the internet that gives a greater sense of confidence in our ability to transmit information. In may ways we are no longer seeing social networking but rather social augmentation. What once took days, weeks or even months to do in terms of the destruction of character or the building of half-true images (and a half-truth is really a complete falsehood) through the old methods of gossip like conversation in the marketplace, the workplace or sadly at church now can occur at lightning speed…as fast as digital information might fly through fibre optics.

I say these things because as much as I claim not to really care what people think, frankly I care what people think. The court of public opinion is probably the harshest, most judgmental and least forgiving of all law courts.

Romans 1:28-32 says “Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

In many ways I think gossip stems from a desire to justify oneself before the world (and possibly before God although I cannot see how). We can look into the lives of others when our own is faltering and gain some sense of satisfaction that we are not the only ones dying and failing with every breath…misery loves company.

The problem with gossip is that there is not a single redeeming attribute to it. Not a one. It is death delivered by the tongue and speaks of judgement, resentment and then worst of all, eventually hatred, which is the living death itself.

Still it is hard to avoid. Especially in an era of social augmentation which takes our private griefs and thrusts them before the world of acquaintances and passers-by who care little for our needs but appreciate the news nonetheless. The making of our prayers public that we might be seen rending our clothes in the midst of the community rather then in the privacy of our closets and small rooms where we have been told to seek Him who can heal all things. While there is healing in mourning there is no life in the reinforcement of bitterness but only a dry and bitter future. There is no living water in the dry wells of those who would seek to validate our misery just a cracked and empty bucket at the end of a frayed untrustworthy rope.

If I cry out to you that I am broken and weighed down by the depth of my own corruption you should perhaps ask what I am really seeking? Do I desire absolution? Perhaps but any absolution from my fellow person is as good as having the thief hanging on Christ’s left absolve the thief hanging on Christ’s right. It is meaningless. Only when we hear the words “today you will be with me in Paradise” from the lips of the one who is Lord of all do we gain any real sense of absolution.

So why do we do the things we do? Why gossip? Why break bonds? Both are expressions of rebellion against God but while a person may seek healing after the broken bond another may continue to lie in a pool of poisonous words and false comfort long after. This is the nature of gossip…it is rarely a momentary act but rather a way of being.

Part of it also stems from a desire to see the world in black and white rather than the complex interweaving of colours and shades that it really is. A world of black and white is certainly simpler and easier to live in and in that sense I understand it. There is right and wrong, there are good people and bad people, there are sinful and sinless and there is nothing in between. Once one determines the blacks and the whites then the thinking can cease and we can rest without having to strain our selves too much trying to remain within the context of an every changing world, with ever changing people.

Gossip allows us to shape the blacks and whites as it seeks to designate people. This one is wrong, this one is right. It is simple. Perhaps a scarlet letter would help to identify the wrong from the right. It also allows us to maintain the falsehood that some are more broken then others. That some sin is worse than others while we know that all sin separates and there is only one bridge who stretched out his arms to cover the gap.

It is hard to not speak our hurts. It is perhaps the hardest of all things because I am doing it right now. Our inborn broken sense of justice demands retribution now, punishment now, judgement now. In the end this is likely the primary motivation for gossip – an unwillingness to wait upon God and to allow his judgement to unfold. A deep sense that somehow his justice is not necessarily what we would do were we him and so we mete it out day by day, word by word, with constant small reminders posted for the hungry world to see that an injustice was done here and we should never forget that this is a simple matter of black and white.